Australian National
This is one variant — a specific cloth: this exact thread count and colourway, with its own provenance below. It is one weaving of the sett (the scale-free proportion — the same cloth at any scale or shade), whose colour order is pattern BGWGWGGGKBWBRB.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 14 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=140
Provenance
Earliest known date: pre 2004 Designed by Betty Johnston of the House of Tartan, Canberra. The Tartan is said to have been formally recognized and accredited by the Protocol Department and Federal Australian Government and was also alleged to have been officially launched at the 30th Bundanoon Highland Festival on 28th April 2007 by the Chieftain on the day the Rt Hon Helen Liddell, British High Commissioner. However . . . . this claim of legitimacy for the tartan is said to be debatable and based on commercial interest. The Scottish Australian Heritage Council is working to have the original Australian tartan (611) accepted by the Commonwealth of Australia. Design rationale as follows. RED, WHITE and BLUE - these colours stem from our National flag and from the time that Captain James Cook first raised the flag (Union Jack) on Australian soil. The six white stripes represent the Southern Cross constellation, which is unique to this hemisphere. This also includes our Federation or Commonwealth Star. Red and White stripes represent the Red Cross of St George (England) on a white background. WHITE - White Diagonal cross represents St Andrews (Scotland) on a dark blue background. RED - Red Diagonal cross represents St Patrick (Ireland). GREEN and GOLD - Green and gold were formally proclaimed by the Australian Government as National colours in 1984 after many requests were made to have traditional sporting colours. BLACK - The Black stripes in the tartan represents Australian's early beginnings as a convict settlement- a dark area of our history.
3 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/08/2002 — Australian National (register-of-tartans, record)
Designed by Betty Johnston of the House of Tartan, Canberra, to be a national tartan for Australia, with permission to use the description 'national tartan for Australia' having been granted by the National Symbols Officer of the Protocol Department for Prime Minister and Cabinet on 22 March 2002. The design has not however been adopted as an official national symbol. Colours: red, white and blue are the colours of the Australia national flag; the six white stripes represent the Southern Cross constellation; the red and white stripes represent the English cross of St George; the white cross on a dark blue background represents the Scottish flag of St Andrew; the red diagonal cross represents St Patrick of Ireland; green and gold were proclaimed as Australia's national colours in 1984; the black stripes represent Australia as a convict settlement. - 2002 — Australian National (Fashion) (tartans-authority, record)
"This popular tartan was designed by Betty Johnston of the House of Tartan, Canberra. Our records note that when the National Symbols Office of Australia granted permission for this tartan to use the name 'Australian National' in 2002, the letter of authorisation made clear that such use of the name 'did not mean' this tartan had been, nor would be adopted as a National Symbol by the Government " Design rationale as follows. "Red, white and blue stem from our National flag and from the time that Captain James Cook first raised the flag (Union Jack) on Australian soil. The six white stripes represent the Southern Cross constellation, which is unique to this hemisphere. This also includes our Federation or Commonwealth Star. Red and White stripes represent the Red Cross of St George (England) on a white background. WHITE - White Diagonal cross represents St Andrews (Scotland) on a dark blue background. RED - Red Diagonal cross represents St Patrick (Ireland). GREEN and GOLD - Green and gold were formally proclaimed by the Australian Government as National colours in 1984 after many requests were made to have traditional sporting colours. BLACK - The Black stripes in the tartan represents Australia's early beginnings as a convict settlement- a dark area of our history."beginnings as a convict settlement- a dark area of our history." - pre 2004 — Australian National Australian District Tartan (house-of-tartan, record)
Dataset — provenance for this record, inherited from the source manifest
- source
- Scottish Register of Tartans
- data captured from
- https://github.com/thetartan/tartan-database/blob/master/data/register-of-tartans/data.csv
- data date
- 01/08/2002 (this record)
- licence
- Crown copyright
Capture chain — the hands this data passed through, oldest first; each capture carries its own licence
- Scottish Register of Tartans · Crown copyright
the living register — still published by National Records of Scotland - thetartan/tartan-database 2016-2017 · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Levko Kravets's frozen compilation — the capture we vendored, and where its CC licence text came from - this dictionary captured 2026-06-10 · commit 5bf86c7566
each re-capture is a git commit to data/sources
Register references
External register numbers recorded for this tartan.
- Scottish Register of Tartans: 140
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 6098
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 2742
Thread count
DB/104 G30 W2 G4 W2 G4 Y4 G4 K4 DBi6 W4 DB4 R4 DBi/10
One full sett is 258 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| DB | #2C2C80 #2C2C80 | oklch(35.0% 0.138 276.6) |
| DB | #202060 #202060 | oklch(28.9% 0.111 276.9) |
| G | #008B2A #008B2A | oklch(55.4% 0.170 145.9) |
| K | #000000 #000000 | oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0) |
| R | #D60020 #D60020 | oklch(55.2% 0.224 25.5) |
| W | #F7F7F7 #F7F7F7 | oklch(97.6% 0.000 89.9) |
| Y | #8B6E00 #8B6E00 | oklch(55.1% 0.113 90.4) |
Sample pattern
Nearest tartan variants
The nearest existing variants by ΔTartan distance, with this cloth at the top so the swatches line up against it.
Neighbour map
Every grey dot is one of 13621 variants placed by the first two principal components of the ΔTartan feature space (42% of its variance). Red is this tartan; blue dots are its nearest — click one to open its page.
ID: /variants/s14/db52g15w1g2w1g2y2g2k2dbi3w2db2r2dbi5x2db1204274-dbi1406275/