Flag of Papua New Guinea
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| Use | National flag, civil and state ensign |
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| Proportion | 3:4 |
| Adopted | 1 July 1971 |
| Design | Divided diagonally from the upper hoist-side corner to the lower fly-side corner: the upper triangle is red with the soaring Raggiana Bird of Paradise and the lower triangle is black with the Southern Cross of four white larger five-pointed stars and the smaller star. |
Variant flag of Papua New Guinea
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| Use | Naval ensign |
| Proportion | 3:4 |
| Adopted | 1 July 1971 |
| Design | A white flag with the national flag of Papua New Guinea in the canton |
The flag of Papua New Guinea was adopted on 1 July 1971. In the hoist, it depicts the Southern Cross; in the fly, a raggiana bird-of-paradise is silhouetted. The designer of the flag was 15-year-old schoolgirl Susan Karike, now Mrs Susan Huhume, who won a nationwide competition for a new flag design in 1971.
Red and black have long been traditional colors of many Papua New Guinean tribes. Black-white-red was the color of the German Empire flag, which had colonized New Guinea prior to 1918. The bird-of-paradise is also found on the national coat-of-arms.
Prior to independence, the Australian administration proposed a vertical tricolor flag with blue, yellow and green bands, along with the bird of paradise and southern cross, designed by a Mr. Holman. It had a mainly negative reception, due to its appearance as that of a "mechanically contrived outcome", thus the alternate proposal attributed to Susan Karike was chosen instead. 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.
The Southern Cross shows that it is a country in the Southern Hemisphere and can be seen in Papua New Guinea.
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Wikipedia