What does a nation choose to sing about itself? For decades, Australia used ‘God Save the Queen.’ Then, in a 1977 plebiscite, the public was asked. ‘Advance Australia Fair,’ a 19th-century patriotic song, won. But it wasn’t official. It existed in a bureaucratic limbo for seven years. The announcement on April 19, 1984, by Governor-General Sir Ninian Stephen, was a formality. A proclamation. The anthem was now the anthem. The colors, green and gold, were now the colors.
But within that administrative act lies a quiet, persistent question of identity. ‘Advance Australia Fair’ speaks of a ‘young and free’ nation with ‘golden soil’ and ‘wealth for toil.’ It is forward-looking, secular, and geographically specific. To choose it was to choose a symbol of independent, post-colonial self-definition, however awkward the melody. The selection of green and gold—the colors of the wattle blossom—over the red, white, and blue of the Union Jack was a complementary gesture. It was a shift from imperial inheritance to natural emblem.
This was not a revolution. It caused little stir. Yet, in the calm language of proclamations, a country was slowly, deliberately, editing its own symbolism. It was choosing the gum tree over the oak, a continent’s palette over an empire’s flag. The event asks what we do with the symbols we inherit, and how we decide, through votes and paperwork, to quietly replace them with ones we feel, however imperfectly, are ours.