Australia is marking 125 years since the Australian National Flag was first flown, commemorating a national symbol that emerged in the first year of Federation and has since become one of the country’s most recognisable emblems.
The anniversary falls on Australian National Flag Day, observed each year on 3 September. On this day in 1901, the new flag was raised above the dome of Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building, just months after the six Australian colonies joined to form the Commonwealth of Australia.
The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet said the 125th anniversary was an opportunity to reflect on Australia’s history and the nation’s achievements since Federation.
“While our flag does not tell the full story of our nation, it remains an enduring symbol of unity and our shared achievements since Federation,” the department said.
The milestone is particularly closely linked with Melbourne. The Royal Exhibition Building, where the flag was first raised, had hosted the opening of Australia’s first Commonwealth Parliament on 9 May 1901.
A commemorative event at the historic building on Thursday was organised to include Speaker of the House of Representatives Milton Dick, federal MPs and Museums Victoria, with a ceremonial unfurling of an Australian Parliament House flag.
The story of the flag began almost immediately after Federation on 1 January 1901, when Australia’s first prime minister, Edmund Barton, backed an international competition to find a flag for the newly created Commonwealth. Entrants were asked to develop designs suitable for official use as well as merchant shipping.
The response was extraordinary for a nation whose population was then only about 3.5 million. A total of 32,823 designs were submitted from Australia and overseas by people from different backgrounds and age groups. Some were tiny enough to be disqualified, while others used enormous quantities of bunting. Designs featuring kangaroos, native animals and the Southern Cross were among those submitted.
Judges spent six days examining the entries at Melbourne’s Exhibition Building. They considered historical relevance, heraldic conventions, originality, practical use and manufacturing cost, while also seeking a design acceptable to the British Admiralty.
In the end, there was no single designer.
Five entrants had independently submitted designs that were judged to be almost identical, and all five were declared joint winners. They were Annie Dorrington, an artist from Perth; Ivor Evans, a 14-year-old Melbourne schoolboy; Leslie Hawkins, a teenage apprentice optician from Sydney; Egbert Nuttall, a Melbourne architect; and William Stevens, a ship’s officer with the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand. The £200 prize was divided between them.
On 3 September 1901, Barton announced the winners and a huge flag measuring about 5.5 metres by 11 metres was raised above the Exhibition Building while the submitted designs were on display below. The flag was initially known as the Commonwealth Blue Ensign.
The 1901 design was recognisably Australian but was not identical to the flag flown today.
It featured the Union Jack in the upper-left corner, a six-pointed Commonwealth Star below it representing the six states, and the five stars of the Southern Cross. The individual Southern Cross stars originally had different numbers of points, ranging from nine to five, intended to indicate their relative brightness.
The design was subsequently standardised. An official drawing published in 1903 showed four of the Southern Cross stars with seven points and the smaller Epsilon Crucis with five. In 1908, a seventh point was added to the Commonwealth Star to recognise Australia’s territories, producing the basic design still used today.
The modern flag has three principal elements. The Union Jack acknowledges the history of British settlement in Australia; the seven-pointed Commonwealth or Federation Star represents the six states and the territories; and the Southern Cross reflects Australia’s location in the Southern Hemisphere.
For decades after Federation, however, there remained confusion about which flag Australians should use. The blue ensign was originally associated particularly with government use, while a red version served as the merchant ensign, and the Union Jack also continued to be widely flown.
King George VI endorsed the Australian government’s recommendation to use the Commonwealth Blue Ensign as the national flag in 1951. Parliament subsequently passed the Flags Act 1953, formally declaring the blue design to be the Australian National Flag and the red design the Australian Red Ensign for merchant shipping. Queen Elizabeth II gave royal assent during her first Australian royal tour in 1954.
The flag received another layer of legal protection in 1998, when the Flags Act was amended so the existing Australian National Flag could not simply be replaced without the Australian people having a say. If alternative designs were put before voters, the existing flag would also have to be included among the options.
Australian National Flag Day itself is considerably younger than the flag. Governor-General Sir William Deane formally proclaimed 3 September as Australian National Flag Day on 28 August 1996, declaring that the anniversary should be observed throughout Australia and its external territories.
For the 125th anniversary, Commonwealth departments and agencies have been asked to fly or display the Australian National Flag throughout Thursday, while schools, businesses, community organisations and members of the public are also being encouraged to display it.
The anniversary comes during a broader year of Federation commemorations. The Commonwealth has noted that 2026 marks 125 years since Federation, the adoption of the Constitution, the first sitting of the Commonwealth Parliament and the first official flying of the national flag.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, in a National Flag Day message published for the anniversary, described the flag as an emblem of “unity, identity and pride”, saying it had accompanied Australians through war, peace, celebration, mourning and enormous social and political change over 125 years.
The flag has long had particular importance for the Australian Defence Force. Chief of the Defence Force Admiral Mark Hammond said the anniversary was a chance to remember Australians who had served and sacrificed under it, describing the flag as a reminder of the ADF’s duty to the country and the people it protects.
Today the Australian National Flag flies permanently above Parliament House in Canberra. Inside Parliament, it is displayed alongside the Australian Aboriginal Flag and the Torres Strait Islander Flag, reflecting the range of symbols now used to represent Australia and its people.
The 125th anniversary also coincides with Merchant Navy Day. Australian merchant mariners historically sailed under the Australian Red Ensign, sometimes known as the “Red Duster”, and government guidance allows it to be flown on 3 September in recognition of their wartime service and sacrifice. When displayed together, the Australian National Flag takes the position of honour.
From a public competition involving nearly 33,000 entries to a flag flown above Parliament House, military deployments, citizenship ceremonies, schools, sporting grounds and Australian missions around the world, the design first raised in Melbourne in 1901 has remained through dramatic changes in Australian society.
One hundred and twenty-five years later, Australian National Flag Day provides an opportunity not only to remember how the flag came into being, but to reflect on the history, identity and shared values Australians have placed beneath it — and on the changing nation it continues to represent.
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