Harold Thomas flies his Aboriginal flag in 1971, designed from his estranged life and learning in Adelaide
Artist Harold Thomas (inset) and his Aboriginal flag flying in Victoria Square, Adelaide.
Inset image courtesy ABC News
The Australian Aboriginal red-black-yellow flag was flown for the first time in Adelaide on National Aboriginal and Islander Day 1971.
The flag, adopted nationally in 1972, was designed by Harold Thomas, the first Aboriginal to graduate from an Australian art school: the South Australian school of art.
The flag achieved the same status as the Australian flag in 2022 after the copyright was transferred to the Australian government, making its use available for free. Thomas retained moral rights over the flag but agreed to give up copyright in return for all future royalties the commonwealth received from flag sales to be put towards the work of NAIDOC (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committees) and a $100,000 scholarship for Indigenous students.
From the Luritja people of central Australia, Thomas was a member of the stolen generation, removed as a child and sent to St Francis House is the Adelaide beach suburb of Semaphore. That experience impacted his sense of identity: “They call you ‘Black’ on the oval, or they call you ‘Darkie’. [But] older boys (at St Francis) used to say: ‘Don't worry about name calling. Be proud of who you are’.”
While at St Francis, Thomas started drawing the sea, sand and wildlife of the nearby beaches including Largs Bay – originally to be called Margate after the location British artist J.M.W Turner made famous. Thomas was later in the care of kindly foster parents who encouraged his art classes at Willunga High School, leading to a scholarship to the South Australian school of art.
Thomas loved the school and absorbed everything about art history. Caravaggio, Goya, Delacroix and Turner were his main influences. He also liked the light treatment achieved by plein air painters in late 19th Century Europe. Thomas learned watercolours from renowned New South Wales-based artist Reg Campbell. Eccentric teacher Remus Degallous, told him to paint under the Russian name Dowsky, as Harold Thomas was “too Anglo”. (Thomas used "Dowsky" for a while.)
Thomas graduated from the school of art in 1969 with honours and a diploma in fine arts. He was also inspired by protests of the era, joining the first Aboriginal march in Adelaide in 1970. But his full immersion in Aboriginal culture came as the first Aboriginal person employed at the South Australia Museum:
“I was working with material Aboriginal culture, working with designs and such; it was all there. Red ochre, yellow ochre. It was natural for me to use those colours that had been used for more than 40,000 years. The red ochre is the land that nourishes us and the yellow represents the sun which gives us all life. The black is a political symbol about black pride, black identity. You just needed an artist like me to create it!”
The Aboriginal flag was centre of many controversies, including the Aboriginal tent embassy and Cathy Freeman’s lap of honour after winning her 1994 Commonwealth Games event. After a copyright dispute, Thomas gave exclusive commercial use rights to three companies to reproduce flags and the image on objects and clothing, making it expensive to use.
In 2016, Thomas's painting Tribal Abduction, of an Aboriginal baby being torn by police from its mother's breast, won $50,000 Telstra prize in the 33rd National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art awards.