Address by Dr Peter Hollingworth
Transcript of the Governor-General
Peter Hollingworth
“Festival of the First Flag”
Townsville
8 August 2001
Thank you to Mayor Tony Mooney and Mrs Mooney, members of the Federal and State Parliaments, Representatives of Local Government, Leaders of church community
Thank you for your warm welcome to my wife and me. One hundred years ago next month, the people of Townsville welcomed Australia’s first Governor-General, Lord Hopetoun to the city and bestowed on him a great honor.
Today, in my first weeks of service as the nation’s 23rd Governor-General and my first visit to North Queensland, I’ve been invited by the Townsville City Council to take part in a similar ceremony. Similar in form. Similar in terms of the official people involved. But in 2001, as we mark 100 years of nationhood, the unfurling of the Australian flag carries so many more proud layers of meaning to the people of Townsville and to people across Australia.
When Lord Hopetoun visited the city at short notice in September of 1901, the idea of inviting him to unfurl the new nation
