In order to boost people's support for the federation of the six Australian colonies into one nation, the Australian Federation movement revived the use of the Australian Ensign in the 1890s with the foundation of the Australasian Federation League by Edmund Barton in 1893.

There is a certain irony in the Australian Federation movement's campaign slogan created by Sir Henry Parkes: One People – One Destiny – One Flag. Australia did not have an official national flag at this time and most Australians regarded Britain’s Union Jack as the national flag.

The Federation Flag was so successful and popular, that it appeared in the official NSW Government's official Invitation to the Inaugural Celebrations for the Commonwealth of Australia on the 1 January 1901.  No steps were taken to create an official Australian flag prior to Federation, and on 29 April 1901 that the Federal government published invitations for a design competition for new flag for the new Federal Government.  The winning design from that competition was announced on 3 September 1901, and today the anniversary of that design is commemorated annually as Australian National Flag Day.

Ralph Bartlett (President, Flags Australia)

The winning design from the new Federal government flag competition was sent to London as a possible new flag for Australia. The Federation Flag was also sent along as ‘Design B’ — Prime Minister Edmund Barton thought this design also merited consideration due to its long historical use in New South Wales. The British Colonial Office decided in favour of the competition winning design on 20 February 1903, making it the official flag of Australia. Use of the Australian Ensign and Federation Flag faded into history as use of the new Australian national flag became widespread over the next century.    

Nicholson's ‘Code of Signals for the Colony of New South Wales’ was first published in the 1829 edition of the Australian Almanack.  Some of the signals were slightly improved and in January 1832 it was published in a new publication, the New South Wales Calendar and Post Office Directory.

The revised ‘Code of Signals for the Colony of New South Wales’ included the internationally recognised Marryat's Signals used by the Royal Navy and commercial shipping for ship-to-shore messages.  

Nicholson also added six new flags to the 1832 chart.  These were locally designed proposed flags for New South Wales (NSW Ensign and NSW Merchant) and Sydney, plus proposed flags for New Zealand, the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and Polynesia.  This chart has become known as the ‘Nicholson Chart’ and is regarded as the ‘founding’ flag document of New South Wales and therefore Australia.

The NSW Ensign with its blue cross on a white field bearing five stars was used as an unofficial flag for the colony, as well as locally built ships. The flag design is likely to have been an adaptation of the first version of the unofficial ‘Advance Australia’ coat of arms, painted for Captain Thomas Silk in 1821 with its cross bearing five stars.  These unofficial arms also evolved into the official flag badge of the NSW flag adopted in 1876 and the NSW state coat of arms adopted in 1906.  The stars are regarded as being representative of the Southern Cross.

This star-crossed flag may be one of the possible inspirations for the Eureka flag, which has the blue and white colours reversed, though without the Union Jack. The NSW Merchant flag may have influenced the design of the Murray River flag in 1853. The British Admiralty in 1883 decided that the flag, by then called the Australian Ensign, was too similar to the Royal Navy's white ensign (with a red cross and no stars) and prohibited its use by local shipping.