Toowoomba Mayor Paul Antonio wants feedback to find new home for ‘unique’ 10kg knitted Australian flag from 1988

A massive 10kg knitted Australian flag, created by hundreds of Darling Downs schoolchildren, has been locked away from the public in council offices. Now the Mayor wants to find a new home for it.

NATIONAL KNIT: Knitting expert Shirleigh Greenwood (centre), with students Kirstine Morse, Stephen Chapman, Anthony Morse and Elizabeth Windley, with a 3000-stitch Australian flag in 1986, which was gifted to the then-Toowoomba City Council.

A plan to unearth and properly display a “unique” piece of Toowoomba history, a knitted Australian flag made up of more than one million stitches, has been presented to Mayor Paul Antonio.

The flag, which was created thanks to the efforts of about a dozen teachers and more than 100 students across the Darling Downs, was the brainchild of former Chronicle staff Ann Dashford and Peter Nicol.

It was gifted to the Toowoomba City Council as part of the 1988 Australian Bicentenary celebrations.

The 10kg flag is now locked away from the public inside the council offices on Herries St, but Cr Antonio wants suggestions for where the item could be better placed.

“It’s got a significant stake in our history, so we’re planning to recognise and celebrate that.

“It’s part of our history we ought to be celebrating, including the involvement of so many young people,” he said.

Ms Dashwood, now an Associate Professor of Applied Language at the University of Southern Queensland, said the flag was a unique part of the city’s heritage.

“It’s (special) because of the engagement of such a broad brush of the Darling Downs schoolchildren, to be part of the stitch of the fabric of the nation,” she said.

“It is unique and it could well be the largest knitted flag in Australia — it’s a one-of-a-kind.”

Anyone who has ideas about the new home for the flag, call the council on 131 872 and ask for the mayor’s office.