Black circle may prove missing link to lost first Aboriginal flag

A BLACK circle of cloth salvaged a generation ago may be the only clue in the search for a missing national cultural treasure.

Philip Jones with a remnant of the flag at the SA Museum. Picture: Kelly Barnes

A BLACK circle of cloth salvaged from a messy desk a generation ago may be the only clue in the search for a missing national cultural treasure.

The circle was cut from black fabric used to make the first Aboriginal flag in the early 1970s, stitched at the South Australian Museum, where designer Harold Thomas was working.

In place of the black circle, the museum’s props department stitched the yellow sun.

Red material representing the earth was then added, bringing to life Thomas’s famous design for the first time.

What happened to the flag is a mystery. All that is certain is, somehow, in the heady days of the black power movement of the 1970s, a significant historical relic was accidentally lost.

The flag was first unveiled at a land rights rally in Adelaide on National Aborigines Day in July 1971, but there is uncertainty as to what happened to it next.

Activist Gary Foley, who was with Thomas when he designed the flag, and at the protest, is not sure whether he took it to Sydney after the demonstration or left with only a copy of the design.

Dr Foley said that if the flag he took to Sydney was the original, it probably ended up at the tent ­embassy in Canberra.

Now an academic at Victoria University, Dr Foley successfully lobbied fellow members of the Redfern Black Caucus to adopt the flag as a symbol of the Black Power movement. Within months of it being designed in Adelaide, the flag was flying as part of the 1972 Aboriginal embassy protest in Canberra.

Alternatively, the flag never left South Australia, and remains unidentified or lost.

South Australian Museum senior curator Philip Jones said the flag was stitched by a woman called Sandy Hanson, another SA Museum worker who helped Thomas “rattle up” the first flag on the museum’s sewing machine.

“In theory, he probably should not have been doing it at work. It was a rogue act,” he said.

Dr Jones said he was not aware of any serious attempts to locate the flag, and the museum had ­retained the black fabric only by chance. He believes there is a 30 per cent chance the flag has survived the past 43 years intact, and ­believes testing any possible contenders against the black circle could determine its authenticity.

Dr Foley is less certain, but holds hope it will one day emerge.

“If by some miracle someone could produce a flag of which they ­establish the provenance and authenticity, I would then argue that it should be installed in a ­national keeping place administered by credible and reputable Aboriginal curators and custo­dians,” he said.

“It would have to be regarded as a priceless Australian historic relic, which would probably be more historically significant than Ned Kelly’s armour.”