Jervis Bay Territory (Australia)

The Jervis Bay Territory is a small area that, in 1915, was surrendered by New South Wales to give Canberra an access to sea. Although Australian Capital Territory's laws apply to the Territory, it's not part of ACT.

My suggestion for a flag for Jervis Bay Territory is the following:


The basic pattern (Southern Cross in hoist third) is the same of a Australian territory. For the rest of the flag, I designed a round badge based in the coat of arms of John Jervis, from whom the territory is named; it also inspired the ship badge of HMAS Jervis Bay. The shells represent the Booderee National Park and the beautiful beaches, while the anchor represents HMAS Creswell.

I like the result, specially the colors arrangement.

Comments are welcome.
I'm planning to soon post my entry in Birmingham community flag contest. Know more here.

Christmas Island (Australia)

We're near Christmas, so it's a good season to show my flag proposal to Christmas Island. Firstly, let's see Christmas Island flag and what needs to be changed:

I'll start saying it's not a horrible flag. Actually, I think that when this flag was made official, in 2002, probably  the flag Tony Couch designed in 1986 (this one) was a good choice. But there's some points I dislike about this flag:

1. The map should be dropped. It's not necessary, as there's many other symbols that could symbolize properly the island, and it isn't a remarkable shape.
2. The reason why the map was needed: empty space. Actually, there's empty space everywhere. Personal experiences made me know 1:2 ratio isn't ideal to handle diagonal designs. Papua-New Guinea, for example, uses a 3:4 ratio; I'll use a more conservative one: 3:5.
3. This bird, the golden bosun (symbol of the island), is turned to the wrong direction: tradition and good-taste tell it should be turned to the hoist. Moreover, I would come with a new design.

Now knowing the necessary steps, I came with this design:

Alternatively, if Christmas Island gain bigger integration with the Commonwealth of Australia, this design may be preferred:

I hope you liked the design. Happy Christmas to everybody!

Your comment is very welcome. Please, comment.

No, I don't stopped my Christmas dinner to post it. This post was previously programmed.

Tasmania (Australia)

Many Australian flags still adopt a blue ensign as their own flag, but Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory successfully changed its own flag to a common pattern, often called "Australian pale". There's even a campaign to change all Australian flags to that pattern. To understand better what I'm saying, look at current Tasmanian flag:

A red lion is so generic that it could be used by any other Commonwealth territory. And Tasmania isn't even in Africa or India. I think a best idea should be the unofficial animal of the island, the Tasmania lion (that's actually a marsupial). A specimen of this animal isn't found for decades, but maybe it isn't extinct. Using the bottle green, associated with the island, I came with this flag:

Using the "Australian pale":

A white border to contrast better, and red is also used to represent Tasmania. Being sincere, I still prefer my first design.

Your comment is very appreciated. Please leave a comment.
Probably the blogging rhythm will be altered until the New Year. After that, it returns to standard frequency. 

Coral Sea Islands (Australia)

I was spending some time doing nothing at Paint Brush when I decided to create a Coral Sea Islands flag? Why should they have a flag? No clear reason, probably just to put on a geography atlas, because just one of the islands is inhabited (with an average of three people!). I made it, definitely, for fun. The result is this:

I tried to put it on a more professional software, making a rainbow gradient, but it isn't a good technique to a flag: possible to do in digital print (although costs much toner), but not in manual needlework. So I decided to put the seven colors separately. I know that the Great Barrier Reef is on Queensland jurisdiction, but I imagine it's visible from the islands.

The background color is coral — a pun with islands name. The flag contains a Southern Cross; if the islands were disputed with other some country, a more "Australian" symbol (like Australian coat of arms) should be needed, but as it doesn't occur, I think it's a very adequate symbol.

It's not a very serious flag, but I'd like very much to receive comments.

Only 23 views to complete a thousand. It's very near!
I don't know if somebody is interested, but I'm creating a blog about sportive mock-up (it's incredibly common here in Brazil). The language is Portuguese, but if you have courage to face an automatic translation, the URL is this: http://gaya-mockups.blogspot.com.br/.

Australasia

In some past sportive competitions, i.e. 1905 to 1914 Davis Cup and 1908 Olympic Games, Australia and New Zealand competed as a unified team under the "Australasia" name. They used this flag:

This flag resembles too much the flag of two countries. The crown is there because Australia and New Zealand was, at time, British colonies. It's a sportive flag, so I improved it to look appropriately, if someday it would be needed again. My idea was use symbols and colors yet associated with sports. The result was this:

The position of the symbols denotes the position of their countries at map. Green and gold are Australian sportive colors, took from golden wattle (Acacia pycnantha), its national floral emblem. Supporter flags with kangaroos aren't uncommon in Australian stadiums. The New Zealand is symbolized by the colors of "All Blacks" and a national symbol, the silver fern, very used in sportive kits. The Southern Cross at the center is a common symbol to the two countries, and was also used in "original" Australasian flag.

I also created a variant flag, with a kiwi replacing the fern, using a typical animal to each one:

What's your opinion about the flags? Feel freely to comment.

Sorry I didn't post nothing last week. I'll try to post twice this week for compensation.

I would be very glad if you follow this blog, and I'm always open to suggestions and feedback.

New South Wales (Australia)

New South Wales has a typical Australian state flag: a British blue ensign with the state badge. The badge is also nothing special: a St. George's cross with a golden lion passant, and a Southern Cross in eight-pointed stars.

My first alteration was to drop the British blue ensign, turning the badge more visible. After that, I removed the lion at center of flag: isn't St. George's cross sufficient, or does it need more "englishness"? It looked this way:

It still looks very like St. George's cross, doesn't it? I changed the background to blue, to become more distinguishable and reference an old New South Welsh flag. So the final design looks like this:

It looks pretty good for me. Not than I dislike other proposals to NSW, but I think this one is more realistic about state necessities. And what's your opinion?

This post was planned to be published very earlier, but I was occupied with my Brazilian states series.
Every comment is welcome and fairly received. Give the yours.