The following is a video of the ceremony which recently took place in Fromelles for the the 250 unidentified British and Australian soldiers who died during a First World War conflict. Take a very close look at the first few seconds of the video. Notice anything odd?

If you didn’t spot it, here’s a crop of the Australian flag flying at half mast.

Do you see it yet? First spotted by “Astro744″ on the IceInSpace forums, the Southern Cross is backwards! In the Australian flag, the 5th star of the cross should be the furtherest away from the Union Jack and instead be placed closer to the flag edge. Instead, it appears reversed. This can’t be an issue of editors mirroring the footage because even then the 5th star in the Southern Cross should still be closest to the outer edge.

So, has the person responsible for locating the flag and arranging for it to be flown at this ceremony in Fromelles completely stuffed this up by buying a fake flag on eBay, or am I completely missing something here? There are other official flags of Australia, but none of them have a backwards Southern Cross.

Update 5th February

I received this response from the RSL today:

On the surface this does appear to be so, but logic suggests no-one could make a National Flag with such an error. A more careful examination of the screen shot reveals that the flag is fluttering and folded across the vertical centre line, creating an impression that the Epsilon Crucis (5^th star) has moved towards the jack.

You could pursue this further with the Media division of the Defence Department but I seriously suggest that it is an illusion cause by the wind moving the cloth of the flag.

I have quite a logical mind and have very good spacial perception. This flag is not waving the manner described above. If you were to bend/fold the flag so that Epsilon Crucis appears on the left side of the constellation instead of the right, then there will clearly be other distortions, namely the moving of Delta Crucis (the outermost right star) towards the centre and even the complete covering of the two vertical stars (Gamma and Alpha Crucis).

I even tried to replicate the flag with a piece of material and fold it by hand to make the constellation appear mirror image. I haven’t yet succeeded.

The Department of Defence have responded only with a “we’re looking into it” response.

Update 7th February

I have posted the following video to highlight the error.

Update 9th February -- Mystery solved

The mystery of the flag has been solved.

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