An Australia Day story

As it's Australia Day here's a topical Australian story.

It's about the Aboriginal flag:




The flag first flew in 1971, the year it was designed by Harold Thomas. It was declared an official flag of Australia in Federal legislation fifteen years ago and Mr Thomas was given copyright on the design.

Now to today.

Google ran a competition, 'Doodle 4 Google' in schools across Australia. The winner was eleven year old Jessie Du (now there's a familiar name to us here in Dubai!) with a very clever design.

Jessie used native animals to form the word google with the Aboriginal flag incorporated in the design around the second 'o'...





Then it all went pear shaped.

I won't bother you with the details, claims and counter claims, there's a link to the story below, but it appears to be a copyright payment issue.

In the end Google airbrushed the flag out.

In purely design terms I think they've ruined it, which is a shame.

But the real reason I'm posting about it is that Mr Thomas is from the town with my very favourite place name and I can't resist the temptation to mention it whenever I get the chance.

He's from the spendidly named Humpty Doo.


No, it's true. Look, they even have a pub:




You can read the story here in the Sydney Morning Herald, for the claims and counter claims.

There's some info on Humpty Doo here and some thoughts on how the name came about here.