THE BOYS FROM ST FRANCIS: An interview with Harold Thomas
In 1945, Anglican priest Father Percy Smith brought six boys from their Northern Territory home to an Adelaide beach suburb. There, they became the first boys of St Francis, a place that would house 50 such boys over 11 years. Some were sent, with the blessing of their mothers, to gain an education. Others were members of the Stolen Generations.
In their interviews with Ashley Mallett, many of these men recall Father Smith's kindness and care. His successors, however, were often brutal, and the boys faced prejudice in a wider world largely built to exclude Indigenous Australians. The Boys from St Francis is a multi-layered tale of triumph against the odds – using the early building blocks of education and sporting prowess. Many of them went on to become fiercely effective advocates for Aboriginal causes, achieving significant progress not just for themselves, but for Aboriginal people, changing their world for the better.
In this edited extract, Harold Thomas, designer of the iconic Aboriginal flag, speaks about his time as a boy of St Francis House, and his career as an artist.
The flag
‘The colours of the Aboriginal flag have a specific symbolic meaning. Black represents the Aboriginal people, red represents the red earth and the spiritual relation to the land and yellow represents the sun, the giver of life.’
– Harold Thomas
From the time he first held a pencil, Harold Thomas loved to draw. He was fascinated by all the wonders of nature; the glory of a spring sunrise to the harsh reality of a seeming never-ending drought. One of 13 children, Harold was born in Alice Springs ‘in the mid or late 1940s’. Sadly his family did not all live under the same roof. He laments that ‘we were removed as children at different stages.’ At the age of seven he came to St Francis House.
A Luritja man from central Australia, Harold is an acclaimed artist, specialising in oils, watercolours and acrylics. He is very much his own man and hasn’t followed the modern tradition of Aboriginal art, but he demonstrates through his images a connection to the land through what can only be described as poetic vision.
And Harold Thomas created the Aboriginal flag.
One of South Australia’s best footballers was Sonny Morey. Sonny spent three years at St Francis House from 1957. He knew Harold Thomas and was a member of the Ethelton Primary School soccer team that Harold captained in 1959. Sonny says Harold Thomas was forever sketching on bits of paper.
‘At St Francis House one of the boys (Gerry Tilmouth) was studying to become a sign writer. I used to watch how he drew and managed to get some idea of colour and the illusion of colour. Gerry really inspired me to draw. I drew on scraps of paper, bits of cardboard, whatever.
The concept of the Aboriginal flag came later, much later, but it all began at St Francis.
‘Some of the boys at St Francis used to play table tennis. There was no rubber on the face of the bats, but on one particular bat was drawn the face of Father Christmas. Jamie (Jim) Bray was the artist and this magnificent drawing further inspired me.
‘When I was about 12 or 13 the warden called me to his office. “Now, Harold, I want you to meet Reverend Donald Wallace and Mrs Wallace. They are going to be your foster parents.”’
The warden gave him sixpence for a bus fare to the city to meet the Wallaces.
‘“Get off at the corner of East Terrace and North Terrace where your new family will meet you. Make sure you behave yourself.”
‘I got off the bus and there was no one to be seen. After a few minutes a man appeared from behind a bush and asked: “Is that you, Harold?”’
Harold found his foster parents to be kind and caring, and they encouraged him to pursue his dream in art classes at Willunga High School and later at the South Australian School of Art.
Harold’s early art included illustrating stories of World War II prisoners of war and a variety of other poignant topics. For a time he studied under the watchful eye of renowned New South Wales-based artist Reg Campbell.
‘Reg taught me how to do watercolour. At school a rather eccentric teacher, Remus Degallous, advised me to paint under the Russian name Dowsky, as Harold Thomas, he said, was “too Anglo”.’
After his time at St Francis House Harold won a scholarship to study at the South Australian School of Art. At art school Harold found his niche. While he is clearly pained by his experience at St Francis House, Harold loved his time at art school.
After graduating with honours in 1969 and armed with his diploma of fine arts, Harold 
applied for a job at the South Australian Museum, becoming the first Aboriginal to be employed in a museum in Australia. The South Australian Museum possessed the largest collection of Aboriginal art and artefacts in the world and Harold, with free access to these cultural treasures, was in his element. It was here that he first began to get a sense of the power of his people’s culture and how it begged to be expressed in some way.
He embraced the history of art and created a list of famous artists who had influenced him the most: Caravaggio, Goya, Delacroix and Turner.
Harold set out to design the Aboriginal flag during the land rights movement of the early 1970s. No one could have imagined how much of an impact it would have on all Australians. The strength of the colours and the message it conveyed made the flag the success it is today. Harold has said that he never needed ‘to promote the flag, or flog it. It just carried itself from person to person.’
There is a strong, symbolic meaning to the flag. Black represents the Aboriginal people, red represents the red earth and the special Indigenous spiritual relationship to the land and yellow represents the sun, ‘the giver of life’.
Imagine the scene when young Harold Thomas sat down to create his masterpiece. Before him is a blank sheet of paper. He wanted to highlight the three colours he had chosen. Black is the colour of his skin. During the 1960s and 1970s there was American pride among the blacks who were still fighting for equality. Black, to Harold Thomas, was not just skin colour. Harold’s black on the Aboriginal flag was as much to do with pride of being black in Australia than anything else. His take on the black was a political inclusion rather than a spiritual, Aboriginal concept.
‘At that time in the late 1960s, early 1970s, black pride represented being black in Australia,’ he said.
Harold Thomas’s choice of colours for the flag is simply magnificent for it conveys a powerful message, a unifying symbol of struggle, spirituality and love. His design has an immediate and lasting impact.
The flag was first flown at Victoria Square on National Aborigines Day, 12 July 1971. (Nowadays National Aborigines Day is known by another name, NAIDOC Week.) However, the flag was not recognised by the federal government as the official flag of the Aboriginal people until 1995. This national recognition was precipitated by Cathy Freeman’s actions at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Canada. After winning the 200-m and 400-m finals, Cathy draped herself in both the Australian and Aboriginal flags during a lap of honour in both events. The images were beamed throughout the world and became the catalyst for official Australian recognition.
To gain this status the government needed to proclaim the flag under the Flags Act. At this time Harold’s design became public property, but Harold wanted to reclaim the flag’s copyright. He took his grievance to court.
It was something of a landmark case, for Harold found ‘people coming out of the blue to say that it was their design’.
‘I wanted to prove that I was the creator of the Aboriginal flag.’
After a seeming interminable time fighting for his rights, Harold won his case. In 1997 the Federal Court of Australia officially recognised Harold Thomas as creator of the flag.
The court battle probably steeled Harold against all outsiders. His world is one of recluse. He loves to paint and exhibit his works, but few people know where to find him. He has also been shortlisted for the annual David Unaipon Award for unpublished works by an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.
Harold has said the journey for Indigenous Australians continues. ‘Today you can be a doctor or a lawyer, but you also need to maintain your identity. You have to bring your mob with you. Too many people forget who they are.’
Today, Harold’s pseudonym of ‘Dowsky’ is long forgotten. He paints under his real name and his work sells on a global scale, commanding good prices.
He is something of a legend in the art world.