The flag of

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

(

Tok Pisin Tok Pisin (,Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student’s Handbook'', Edinburgh ; Tok Pisin ), often referred to by English speakers as "New Guinea Pidgin" or simply Pidgin, is a creole language spoken throughout Papua New Guinea. It is an ...

: ''plak bilong Papua Niugini'') was adopted on 1 July 1971. In the hoist, it depicts the

Southern Cross Crux () is a constellation of the southern sky that is centred on four bright stars in a cross-shaped asterism commonly known as the Southern Cross. It lies on the southern end of the Milky Way's visible band. The name ''Crux'' is Latin for ...

; in the fly, a

Raggiana bird-of-paradise The Raggiana bird-of-paradise (''Paradisaea raggiana''), also known as Count Raggi's bird-of-paradise, is a large bird in the bird-of-paradise family (biology), family Paradisaeidae. It is distributed widely in southern and northeastern New Guin ...

is silhouetted. The design was chosen through a nationwide design competition in early 1971. The winning designer was Susan Karike, who was 15 at the time. Red and black have long been traditional colours of many Papua New Guinean tribes. Black-white-red was the colour of the

German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...

flag, which had colonised New Guinea prior to 1918. The bird-of-paradise is also found on the national coat-of-arms. The Southern Cross shows that it is a country in the Southern Hemisphere and can be seen in Papua New Guinea. Prior to independence, the Australian administration proposed a vertical tricolour flag with blue, yellow and green bands, along with the bird of paradise and southern cross, designed by Hal Holman. The blue was said to represent the sea and islands of New Guinea, the Southern Cross was a guide for the travelling peoples, the gold represented the coastlines, mineral wealth, and unity, and the green represented the forested highlands and mainland, with the Bird of Paradise representing the unification under one nation. It had a mainly negative reception, due to its appearance as that of a "mechanically contrived outcome", thus the alternative proposal attributed to Susan Karike was chosen instead.

Government flags

Historical flags of Papua New Guinea

References

Flags introduced in 1971 National flags

Flag A flag is a piece of fabric (most often rectangular or quadrilateral) with a distinctive design and colours. It is used as a symbol, a signalling device, or for decoration. The term ''flag'' is also used to refer to the graphic design empl ...

Flags adopted through competition Southern Cross flags Flags displaying animals {{Flag-stub

Government flags

Historical flags of Papua New Guinea

See also

References