![[Parramatta City Council flag]](../images/a/au-ns-pr.gif)
image by Jens Pattke and Antonio Martins-Tuvalkin, 17 August 2010
Last modified: 2020-06-20 by ian macdonald
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image by Jens Pattke and Antonio Martins-Tuvalkin, 17 August 2010
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The flag of the Parramatta City Council, New South Wales, consists of three
vertical stripes of light blue-white-light blue with city logo in the center of
the white stripe. You can see it on a photo here:
http://www.streetcorner.com.au/news/showPost.cfm?bid=15298&mycomm=NW. Logo can be seen here:
http://www.parramattacps.org.au/CouncilLogoOrange106x106.jpg, but the blue
on the logo is more violet on the flag.
Valentin Poposki, 11 August
2010
Parramatta, 23 km west of the Sydney CBD at the head of the Parramatta River
(which becomes Sydney Harbour), was the second European settlement in Australia.
It is still the second major hub of Sydney, with a growing business district of
its own. The council website describes the city as the "capital of Greater
Western Sydney", and information on its history refers to the "capital of
western Cumberland" [County - counties are now almost entirely obsolete in NSW].
The area was chosen as the site for a farm by Governor Phillip in 1788 and
named "Rose Hill". The name Parramatta was adopted in 1791 from the local
Dharug people's name for the place: Barramatta, meaning 'head of the waters' or
'eel waters/creek'. It was a significant meeting place before and after European
settlement.
The city council now spreads from central Parramatta to the
north-east, north-west and south, in a Y shape.
The logo takes the form
of a circular seal, with an orange (gold?) centre, a dark blue ring and a thin
dark blue blue encircling line all separated from each by white fimbriation. The
blue ring bears the words "PARRAMATTA" (at the top) "CITY COUNCIL" (at the
bottom). The orange disk features a scene in black silhouette, showing an
Aboriginal man and woman fishing in a river (the woman seated in a canoe, the
man in the foreground standing in the water with a poised spear). In the
background are a shore with two palm trees visible (to the right) and 'an old
steamer on the horizon' (to the left).
According to material provided by
Council Communications Officer Tim Evans, the inaugural Council commissioned a
'novel and picturesque landscape style of heraldry' seal and "crest" in November
1861. The been recent suggestions that the original was based on a Burns Philp
money token, making it look more like the South Sea Islands than Parramatta
River. Unusual features include the steeply sloping foreshore, the palms (in the
past described as cabbage-tree palms, reportedly typical regional vegetation),
and the appearance of the steamer (paddle-steamers did once travel the shallow
waters of the river) with tall masts.
Over the years, the scene has been
redrawn at least 4 times in the seal format, and also appears at the entrance to
the Parramatta Town Hall (built in 1880), in an escutcheon. Larger depictions,
such as found on the Council Chambers building, show more details, such as cross
pieces and a clay fireplace in the bark canoe. The version of the logo seen on
the pictured flag is the 1994 one, with the spearhead featuring three shell
points mounted one on top of each other. According to pp43-44 of the Council's
2004 State of the Environment Report (http://www.parracity.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/6531/22_02_05_SoE_FINAL_DESIGN.pdf),
the Indigenous community was consulted about the accuracy of the depiction, and
the current version [as linked by Valentin] instead shows the three-pronged
spear of 'gig', commonly used around Sydney. Each prong is tipped with a sharp
fish tooth.
The flag is flown, together with the national flag, from the
top of the Council Chambers behind the Town Hall. The flagpole on the Town Hall
flies the national flag, while the three flagpoles out the front in the Church
St mall [street closed to traffic] usually fly Australian, Aboriginal and TSI
flags. I have only seen the City flag otherwise used in the context of
celebrating the Parramatta Eels rugby league team.
Jonathan Dixon,
12 August 2010
The flag flying from the Council Chambers shows the three stripes equal in
size.
Jonathan Dixon, 19 August 2010
The City of Parramatta is technically a new local government area, one of two
products of a three-way merger. In practice, though, it is simply the former
Parramatta City Council with significant boundary
changes. I expect they will continue to use basically the same the flag and
other symbols, and their web presence already uses a new version of the seal,
with the text changed to "CITY OF PARRAMATTA".
Jonathan Dixon, 16
May 2016
The Parramatta City Council flag was historically flown from other buildings during Parramatta's "Foundation Week" which is in early November. It was definitely flown at Parramatta High School in the mid 1980s (as I was the person responsible for raising and lowering the flag) and I recall seeing the flag flown on some other buildings during the week. With exposure to the weather the light blue became more of a mauve colour.
Greg Mashiah, 19 June 2020
![[Parramatta City Council flag]](../images/a/au-nsprw.gif)
based on image by Jens Pattke and António Martins, 9 January 2016
Council now also regularly flies flags at two large flagpole on the banks of
the Parramatta River at Parramatta. At the moment, the flags are the national
flag and the usual triband city flag, however at times an alternative city flag
with the badge on a plain white field has been flown. See this photo from the
225th anniversary of white settlement/75th anniversary of city status in
November 2013:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/flags/files/A/AU/NS/au-ns-pr.JPG
Jonathan Dixon, 9 January 2016
![[Parramatta City Council flag]](../images/a/au-nsprv.gif)
image by Jens Pattke and António Martins, 9 January 2016
I came across this variant of the flag for vertical use, with the badge
rotated to remain vertical at
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWLThSUUwAAhE0V.jpg.
Jonathan Dixon,
9 January 2016
