Australia

Design of the flag

The Australian flag is composed of three parts:

• The Union Jack (British flag) in the top left corner,
• The 'Star of Federation' in the bottom left corner, and
• The Southern Cross, taking up the right half of the flag.

All the stars have an inner diameter (circle on which the inner corners rest) of 4/9 the outer diameter (circle of outer corners), even the 5-point star. The positions of the stars are as follows:

• commonwealth star - centred in lower hoist,
• alpha - straight below centre fly 1/6 up from bottom edge,
• beta - 1/4 of the way left and 1/16 up from the centre fly,
• gamma - straight above centre fly 1/6 down from top edge,
• delta - 2/9 of the way right and 31/240 up from the centre fly,
• epsilon - 1/10 of the way right and 1/24 down from the centre fly.

History of the flag

A competition was held to find the flag that would be adopted by the new nation of Australia late last century (Australia became a nation on 1 January 1901). Thousands of submissions were received, but something very interesting occurred: six of the flags received (no two from areas close to one another) were virtually identical. Not only had the same design been received six times independently from different parts of the country, but it looked good too. The flags differed only in small details (the number of points on the various stars, the size of the Union Jack, etc). The committee looking at the flags eventually decided on a flag that was not exactly the same as any one of the six, but similar to all of them. The prize money was shared between the six contestants. The flag was not actually adopted offically until 1952.
Rick Brockway

The 'Flags Act 1953' (Act No. 1 of 1954) was passed by the Commonwealth Parliament in November 1953 proclaiming definitively the Australian Blue Ensign as the national flag and the Australian Red Ensign as the proper colours for merchant ships registered in Australia.
David Cohen, 26 March 1999

Australia's first `Federal' flag was chosen from a national flag competition held in 1901. Initially started by the Melbourne newspaper The Review of Reviews, the new Federal Government joined the competition (Gazetted 29 April 1901) and doubled the prize money to 150 pounds. The competition attracted 32,823 entries.

The first condition of the entry rules stipulated that the design "should be based on the British Ensigns, as the flag of the country added to its folds, signalling to the beholder that it is an Imperial Union Ensign of the British Empire." This essentially meant that inclusion of the Union Flag in the design was mandatory. The judges (five of them Naval officers) refused to consider designs that did not contain the Union Flag.

Australia's first Prime Minister, Edmund Barton, announced the winning design in Melbourne on 3 September 1901. The design had a mixed reception and caused some controversy at the time, usually on aesthetic grounds rather than its Anglophile nature.

In the original design the Federation Star contained only 6 points and the Southern Cross was represented by stars ranging from 5 to 9 points to indicate their relative apparent brightness in the night sky.

The adoption of the winning flag design was never debated in the Australian Parliament - it was sent to the Imperial Authorities in England to be approved. It wasn't until late 1902 that King Edward VII formally notified the Australian Government of the approval, and this approval was finally Gazetted on 20 February 1903.
Dov Gutterman, 14 December 1998

The Australian Flags Act which gives design specs for the Australian flag does not give colour definitions apart from simply saying blue, red and white. It does say that a UJ occupies the canton, so it's safe to assume that the colours would be the same as the UK's but there's no technical reason why the non-UJ parts of flag can't use slightly different shades. I remember reading a quote from Ivor Evans, one of the designers of the Australian flag, speaking in the 1950's I think, he made reference to the blue on the Australian flag being changed from Navy Blue to Royal Blue, possibly in 1909, but it could even have been a few years later.
Dylan Crawfoot, 28 July 1999

Judging by the date, this probably refers to a general change, when the specification for the blue used in all Union Flags and Blue Ensigns was altered to matched the shade of blue specified for the Royal Standard. Pattern 74 "Royal Blue", replaced Pattern 63 "Dark Blue".

This is recorded in the Public Record Office document ADM 116/1072, 1908/9 errata to 1907 edition Admiralty Flag Book, and has fabric samples of various shades of blue.
David Prothero, 29 July 1999