Current Issue of Crux Australis: Issue No. 137

The most recent issue of Crux Australis is No. 137 [Volume 34/1] issued for the period January - March 2021.

The contents are:

SUMMARY

This first edition of Crux Australis for 2021 opens with a reminder of the distance between authentic patriotism and gratuitous display of national or partisan flags – reinforced in Washington on 6 January. 

The masquerades of hollow patriotism are amply illustrated in the first essay.  That sometimes mistakes reveal ignorance rather than intent is acknowledged through various Australian examples.  

Extensive background follows on the unresolved dispute about the licensing of images of the Aboriginal Flag and restrictions on use. A related controversy has emerged on the display of the two Indigenous flags with the national flag inside the Federal Parliament, the contentious point that Australia has one national flag (not three as might be construed from the commonly seen trinity). The state flag of Massachusetts is discussed as an awkward relic awaiting attention, with a context of historical subjugation of Native Americans and continuing inequity and inequality.  

The flag quiz presents the many flags used in Australia from its own colonial foundations. For Australia, an effective national flag could be more inclusive than it appears to be, and could be changed if there were the will and reason for that – a question explored in the third main article. A long incumbency suggests that any change to the Australian flag will be difficult, especially for those who are relaxed about the heritage of former Empire. Any change could favour continuity of existing elements, and there is the challenge to incorporate a recognition of First Nations in a future design.

Still on an Australian (and quirky) theme is an account of the time last century when the Commonwealth went to war against an invasion of emus – depicted fictively in a flag context as a Green Death ray challenging the Gold Star.  Entertaining also is the little-known skirmish between two nations in the Canadian far west over pork and potatoes, resolved when cool heads and common sense prevailed.  Hopefully the same will serve in current muscle-flexing over natural resources in the eastern Mediterranean, while nearby, Cypriots also struggle with the idea of union neither with Greece nor Turkey but among themselves under a current flag that comes close to a signal of surrender.

Brief notices appear on the International Congresses of Vexillology scheduled (tenuously) for July 2021 in Ljubljana and in Beijing in 2023.

Commentary by Tony Burton

© 2021

Material Copyright to the Flag Society of Australia Inc and Pennant Advisory Services Pty Limited. Text and illustrations by Ralph Kelly. Web Design by Elizabeth Kelly of ELK Prints.