With our flag’s 104th “birthday” approaching on 3 September, the Australian National Flag Association is trying to locate all the living relatives of the original designers of our flag – the five people who jointly won the official flag design competition run in 1901.

Queensland President Allan Pidgeon said: “We’d like to honour the memory of those who won the world’s first-ever open public competition to design a national flag”.

“Australia’s flag is unique in that it is the only one to fly over an entire continent, and also in the way it was chosen following federation in 1901”. There was a huge response to the competition announced by the new Commonwealth Government – the number of entries was equivalent to about 1% of the Australian population at the time.

The judges settled on five designs that were almost identical; so each of the five winners received ₤40 when their names were revealed on 3 September 1901.

The winners were:
  • Annie Dorrington from Perth (who became quite a well-known artist);
  • Ivor Evans from Melbourne (a 14 year-old schoolboy whose father owned a flag-making business);
  • Leslie John Hawkins from Leichhardt in NSW (an 18 year-old, apprenticed to an optician);
  • Egbert John Nuttall from Prahran in Victoria (a 35 year-old architect); and
  • William Stevens (First Officer in the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand).


The Australian National Flag Association hopes that they can be guests of honour at the celebrations on Saturday 3 September to mark our flag’s 104th “birthday”.

Anyone who can identify descendants of our flag’s designers is invited to send details to qld@australianflag.org.au.






























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