The Terra Australis States Assembly emblem was born in 2021, as the original CASA became TASA and a new website was being created.
But the emblem story did not begin at a desk.
It began with Muki’s memories of his younger years as a jackaroo on Kalala Station, near Daly Waters on Northern Australis.
At the outback turkey nests, he would sometimes come upon massive assemblage of Black Cockatoos drinking — so many that the branches above them bent beneath their weight like arched boomerangs.
That image stayed with him.
Decades later, when the Assembly needed an emblem, Muki returned to the Black Cockatoo and its feather. Its colours connected naturally with those long associated with the First Peoples of this land, while the feather itself could become a quill — carrying the enduring idea that the pen is mightier than the sword.
He asked graphic designer Rosey to bring those ideas together, and from that direction, the emblem was born.
Later, during a visit to Far North Queensland, another layer was added to the story:
the Black Cockatoo was described to him by retired Queensland Police Prosecutor and bird breeder, David Walter, as the Messenger Bird.
It fitted the emblem almost as though it had always belonged there.
A messenger carries something from one place to another.
And so the feather came to represent not only the memory of the cockatoos gathered over an outback waterhole, but the purpose of Assembly itself — carrying the voice of the people across the land and calling communities together.
The land had offered the beginning of the symbol.
Different ideas and versions followed, but the red and yellow remained. They became the colours of the emblem, carrying forward the memory of those feathers and the idea of the cockatoo as a messenger.
And gradually the feather became much more than an image.
It became the seed for the story of the Assembly itself.
Anyone who has heard a cockatoo knows that its voice is difficult to ignore.
Its call travels.
It announces its presence across distance and people are drawn to look up.
That makes the cockatoo a fitting messenger for the Assemblies.
An Assembly does not exist to rule over people. Its first purpose is to allow people to communicate — to hear one another, find common ground and give collective voice to what their communities need.
The feather therefore carries a call.
And because a feather belongs to a creature of flight, it also carries the idea of freedom — not freedom as escape from responsibility, but freedom made possible by accepting it.
Self-governance asks us to rise.
To think for ourselves, speak for ourselves and take responsibility for the world we are creating together.
Running through the centre of the emblem is another important story.
The original idea was simple: the pen is mightier than the sword.
But within the finished emblem it says something even more powerful.
The sword has not disappeared. It has been transformed.
The blade remains upright, but the pen governs it.
That is important.
A peaceful nation still requires strength. It still needs boundaries, courage, accountability and the ability to protect life. But strength is not meant to rule.
It must answer to principle.
The sword therefore is not a weapon but a straight line running through the emblem — a reminder that our principles must remain upright, authority must remain accountable and power must remain restrained.
The pen governs the sword, not the other way around.
The feather is filled with light.
Red becomes orange. Orange becomes gold.
A dark sun rests against the horizon and its light stretches across the water.
This gives the emblem another layer of meaning.
A horizon is a place between what has been and what is coming.
Sunset can represent the ending of an old way.
Sunrise can represent the beginning of another.
And deliberately, the image does not have to tell us which one we are looking at.
We are living in both.
Something is ending while something else is being born.
The Assembly stands in that transition, allowing ordinary men and women to participate in creating the communities they wish to see.
The darkness in the image is therefore not the enemy of the light. It gives the light its definition. The gold appears brighter because both are present.
The story is not that everything behind us was darkness and everything ahead will automatically be light.
The story is that we are responsible for what we carry forward.
Beneath the horizon lies water, catching and reflecting the light above it.
That reflection adds an important part to the story.
Self-governance begins with self reflection.
Before we attempt to govern a community, we learn to govern ourselves. Before we demand accountability from institutions, we practise accountability among ourselves. Before we ask others to listen, we learn to listen.
The sky and water mirror one another just as principles and actions must eventually mirror one another.
What we say we believe must be visible in how we behave.
The Assembly cannot simply speak of peace, responsibility, abundance and freedom.
It must become those things in practice.
Below the waterline, the feather becomes alive.
Animals, plants, insects, landscape and flowing water are held within it.
This reminds us why the Assembly exists in the first place.
The purpose is life.
The kangaroo evokes movement and the courage to continue forward.
The emu speaks to endurance, awareness and belonging to this country.
The butterfly carries transformation — the possibility that something can become profoundly different without ceasing to be alive.
The smaller plants and creatures matter just as much as the larger ones. Their presence reminds us that abundance cannot be measured only through buildings, markets or accounts.
A thriving nation can be seen in its soil, its water, its creatures, its families and its communities.
The earth is therefore not merely scenery inside the feather.
It is what the feather protects.
There is another subtle feature in the central design.
The feather contains sky, water, animals, plants and earth, yet none of them are separated into independent emblems.
They share one feather.
That gives us a useful way of comprehending Assembly.
We may work in different places and take responsibility for different things. There will be Local Assemblies in all communities, different offices and different areas of work in different jurisdictions.
But they are not supposed to become isolated little kingdoms.
They belong to one living whole.
Difference does not require division.
Local responsibility and national unity can exist together.
The feather holds many things without making them all the same.
So can we.
Around the feather are three great arcs of coloured dots.
They immediately suggest gathering.
Each dot remains distinct. None loses its individuality. Yet together they create something that no single dot could form alone.
That is perhaps one of the simplest visual descriptions of an Assembly.
The individual does not disappear into the collective.
The collective does not exist without the individual.
One becomes many, while remaining one.
The three widening arcs can also be read as widening circles of responsibility: ourselves and those nearest to us; our local communities; and the wider nation we share.
Authority grows outward through participation rather than descending from somewhere above.
The arcs do not imprison the feather inside a solid border. They remain open and breathable.
That matters too.
Assembly is not a closed club.
The dot-work also offers a respectful acknowledgement of the First Peoples of this land and of a human story here far older than the institutions that followed.
It should not be presented as reproducing the sacred art or symbolism of any particular Aboriginal nation. Rather, within the TASA emblem it serves as an acknowledgement: that this land already carried culture, law, community, responsibility and relationship long before modern administrative systems appeared.
The colours also return us to where the emblem began.
The colours of the cockatoo feather.
The colours of earth and fire.
The colours of sunrise and sunset.
Across the arcs they move gradually, like light travelling across the day.
That movement gives the emblem a sense of time.
No generation owns the land forever.
Within the circles appear two simple phrases:
Abundant Life
Abundant Earth
They are much more than aspirations.
They can be understood as a test.
If our systems produce fear, scarcity, isolation and destruction while calling themselves successful, perhaps we are measuring the wrong things.
If the earth is being diminished, stewardship is failing.
If communities are becoming weaker, governance is failing.
If people cannot live purposeful and flourishing lives, something requires repair.
Abundance does not mean endless consumption.
It means enough.
Abundant Life and Abundant Earth therefore describe the destination toward which the Assembly should continually orient itself.
At the foundation of the emblem are the words:
Land and Soil Jurisdiction
Their position is fitting.
Everything else rises from there.
The Assembly begins with living men and women standing upon the land where they actually live.
Rather than imagining legitimate authority as something that must forever descend from distant institutions, the emblem turns the picture upright.
Responsibility begins beneath our feet and works outward.
The people are not an inconvenience to governance.
They are its reason for existing.
Even the empty space surrounding the feather has a place in the story.
The emblem does not attempt to fill everything.
That can remind us that the future has not already been written.
Self-governance is not about replacing one rigid system with another rigid system and declaring the work finished.
The emblem itself remains unfinished in that sense.
Its story continues with the people who gather beneath it.
Seen as a whole, the emblem tells one continuous story.
A feather is found upon the land.
The feather becomes a messenger.
The messenger becomes a pen.
The pen governs the sword.
The sword becomes an upright line of action.
Around it gather many individual dots, forming circles without surrendering their individuality.
Within it live the land, waters and creatures that give governance its purpose.
Above and below are the colours of changing light — the ending of one age and the possibility of another.
And at its foundation is the soil itself.
That is the story of the Terra Australis States Assembly emblem.
From force to communication.
From hierarchy to participation.
From extraction to stewardship.
From spectatorship to responsibility.
From scarcity thinking toward abundant life on an abundant earth.
The cockatoo does not order anyone to gather.
It simply calls across the land.
Those who hear it decide for themselves whether to answer.
And that may be the most important meaning in the emblem of all:
Assembly begins with an invitation.
