Mystery of the first Aboriginal flag

Harold Thomas carries the Aboriginal flag during a parade to celebrate the 30th anniversary of its creation. Picture: Mike Burton Source: adelaidenow

THE designer of the Aboriginal flag, flown for the first time at a demonstration in Adelaide's Victoria Square in 1971, has called for help to find his original item.

As the square's upgrade continues, artist and activist Harold Thomas says if the original flag exists, it should be handed to the National Museum of Australia.

Thomas was a young artist working at the SA Museum when, in 1971, he made his great mark on Australian history by designing the Aboriginal flag and flying it in Victoria Square.

While the flag has become one of our most powerful national symbols, the whereabouts of the original - a national treasure if it still exists - remains a mystery.

Mr Thomas and his friend and fellow activist Gary Foley first unveiled the flag at a land-rights rally in Victoria Square on National Aborigines Day, July 12, 1971.

He remembers feeling "apprehension" as authorities might have viewed it as "an act of treason".

He says Mr Foley took the original flag to the eastern states - Mr Foley is less certain about this - where the design became the emblem of the Aboriginal tent embassy at Parliament House in 1972.

But Mr Thomas, now 66 and still working as an artist near Darwin, does not know what happened to it next.

"At the time when Aborigines would see flags like this, people would take it (home) as a trophy from a demonstration," he says, adding that it might be stowed away in the home of someone who has no idea of its significance.

The SA Museum has fragments of the cloth from which the flag was cut but, sadly, never found the flag itself.

Senior curator in anthropology Dr Philip Jones said the museum tried unsuccessfully to track down the original "years ago".

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