Flag of South Australia

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South Australia
Flag of South Australia.svg
Use Civil and state flag FIAV 110000.svg FIAV normal.svg IFIS Mirror.svg
Proportion1:2
Adopted1904;121 years ago (1904)
DesignA British blue ensign with the state badge in the fly

The current state flag of South Australia, was officially adopted in 1904.

Contents

The flag is based on the defaced British Blue Ensign with the state badge located in the fly. The badge is a gold disc featuring a piping shrike with its wings outstretched. The badge is believed to have been originally designed by Robert Craig, a teacher at the School of Arts in Adelaide, and officially gazetted on 14 January 1904. [1]

Design

The flag uses the same basic template as the flag of every other Australian state, a blue field with the Union Jack on the canton and a unique design on the fly. In this case, the seal is a yellow disc, representing the sun, with a piping shrike perched on a eucalyptus tree branch. The Piping Shrike is more commonly known as a White-backed Magpie. [2] [3] [4] [5]

Colours

SchemeBlueWhiteRedGold
Refs [6]
Pantone (paper)295 CSafe199 C137 C
HEX #002855#FFFFFF#d50032#ffa300
CMYK 100, 53, 0, 670, 0, 0, 00, 100, 77, 160, 36, 100, 0
RGB 0, 40, 85255, 255, 255214, 0, 49255, 163, 0

History

Flag of South Australia (1870-1876).svg
Flag between 1870–1876
Flag of South Australia (1876-1904).svg
Flag between 1876–1904

Previous flags

The first flag of South Australia was adopted in 1870. It too was a defaced British Blue Ensign but with a black disc in the fly containing the Southern Cross and the two pointers (Alpha and Beta Centauri).

South Australia then adopted a second flag in 1876, also a Blue Ensign, with a new badge. The badge design was an artistic rendition of the arrival of Britannia (a white woman in flowing garb and holding a shield, representing the new settlers) meeting an Aboriginal sitting with a spear on a rocky shoreline. A kangaroo appears to be carved into the rocks behind the Aboriginal. This flag was adopted after a request from the Colonial Office for a new design over the old one due to its similarity to the flags of New Zealand and Victoria.

Current design

The badge design adopted in 1876 was deemed to complex by some, and a request was sent to Frederick Holder, then the premier of South Australia to make the seal simpler. [7] It was apparently designed by Robert Craig, and featured a yellow disc representing the sun, with a magpie (piping shrike) on top of it. On Wednesday 27 February 1901 the painting by H.P Gill [8] was approved by both the Governor and the Premier of South Australia as the design of the new State Badge for South Australia. The Premier wrote on the back of the painting “Accepted (without pomegranate)”. The Governor wrote the following heraldic description on the back of the painting: “The rising sun – or – Thereon an Australian piping shrike displayed proper – under a pomegranate flower amid leaves and standing on a gum-staff, raguly, gules and vert.” (or = gold, displayed proper = in its natural colours, raguly = with oblique lines, gules = red, vert = green). The Governor removed the reference to the pomegranate, and crossed out gum and changed gum-staff to staff of gum tree. [9] It was adopted on January 13, 1904 and the seal also appears on the Coat of arms of South Australia, which was introduced 80 years later.

Though the state flag was originally intended for use only on government buildings, in 1908 the Government of South Australia began encouraging the use of it by private citizens. [10]

Proposal for a new flag

On 29 October 2016, a motion to adopt a new, "more multicultural" state flag was passed at the South Australian Labor Party conference. [11] The State Government did not act on this proposal before Labor lost office at the 2018 state election.

Regulation and use

According to section 3A of the Unauthorised Documents Act 1916:

Any person who, without the permission of the Minister—

(a) prints, publishes or manufactures; or
(b) causes to be printed, published or manufactured, any document, material or object incorporating, depicting or in the form of, a prescribed emblem—
(c) for any commercial purpose; and
(d) in such a manner as to suggest that the document, material or object has official significance,

shall be guilty of an offence.

Governor's flag

The governor of South Australia, being the representative of the South Australian head of state, the king of Australia, is officially granted a flag for use on all official occasions. It is identical in design and construction to the flag of South Australia, except that it features a St. Edward's Crown above the badge to represent vice-regal power.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Department of Premier & Cabinet > State Badge of South Australia Archived July 16, 2012, at the Wayback Machine Accessed 13 October 2011.
  2. ↑ Fraser, Ian; Gray, Jeannie (2019). Australian Bird Names: Origins and Meanings. Clayton South, Victoria, Australia: CSIRO Publishing. ISBN   9781486311637.
  3. ↑ Kirby, Miles (1986). Accepted without pomegranate: The story of the piping shrike (Original ed.). Adelaide: M. Kirby.
  4. ↑ "The state emblem of SA". SA Memory: State Library of SA. State Library of SA. 14 September 2006. Retrieved 30 March 2022.
  5. ↑ "Using the state insignia and emblems". Government of South Australia. 28 March 2019. Retrieved 30 March 2022.
  6. ↑ Cabinet, Department of the Premier and (2019-03-28). "Using the state insignia and emblems". Department of the Premier and Cabinet. Retrieved 2025-09-10.
  7. ↑ "Flag of South Australia | Meaning, Design & History | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2025-09-10.
  8. ↑ original water colour painting of the Piping Shrike, State Records of South Australia https://www.archives.sa.gov.au/, Flickr
  9. ↑ Kirby, Miles (1986). Accepted without pomegranate: The story of the piping shrike (Original ed.). Adelaide: M. Kirby.
  10. ↑ The symbols of South Australia
  11. ↑ Langenberg, Adam (29 October 2016). "State Government considers adopting a "more multicultural" South Australian flag". The Advertiser. Retrieved 31 December 2020.
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