A Flag in Common

Using previously unpublished archival material, this article recounts the efforts of individual Australian citizens to determine, and even reinvent, the design of the promulgated flags of the new Commonwealth of Australia in the early Federation period.

Abstract:
On 20 February 1903, the flags of the new Australian Commonwealth, recently approved by imperial authorities in London, were published in the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette. The blue ensign and red merchant flag were the result of a 1901 competition attracting more than 32,000 submissions. Both were unsurprising in their design: the principle elements-the Union Jack in the canton and Southern Cross on the /y-had been anticipated in official and unofficial flags of the nineteenth century. Public commentary had consistently supported the inclusion of the Union Jack to signify Australia's place in the British Empire and of the Southern Cross as a distinctive marker of global location. The ratification process had been slow but it appeared that the Federation-era slogan of 'One people, one flag, one destiny' had definitively materialised in a national emblem.