Flag of South Australia
The current state flag of South Australia, was officially adopted in 1904.
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.
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.Colours
History
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.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 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. It was apparently designed by Robert Craig, and featured a yellow disc representing the sun, with a magpie on top of it. On Wednesday 27 February 1901 the painting by H.P Gill 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 ”. 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.”. The Governor removed the reference to the pomegranate, and crossed out gum and changed gum-staff to staff of gum tree. 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.