After serving as Press Secretary to four Australian Prime Ministers I had recently arrived from Canberra as the first Director. At Marlborough House I was supported by a dedicated team that included both Patsy Robertson and the new Deputy Director, Charles Gunawardena. Patsy, in her key role as Press Officer, had been one of the first staffers appointed by Secretary-General Arnold Smith when the Secretariat was established in 1965.

 Arnold Smith raised with me the question of a logo. The Secretary-General felt that the Commonwealth needed its own distinctive identity. For instance, all the Commonwealth High Commissioners in London had national flags to fly on their cars, but there was no equivalent for Arnold Smith. It would be appropriate to have a Commonwealth pennant to fly on the Secretary-General's limousine.

I gave preliminary thought to a design and discussed this with Derek Ingram and Derek's talented designers at the Gemini news agency. The concept was a logo based on the world globe surrounded by the letter "C". The "C" comprised a semi-circle of small strokes symbolizing the Commonwealth's world-wide membership and its multitudinous lines of contact and communication. (In the initial stages, the draft was jokingly dubbed the "Eggleton hedgehog" [a round object with lots of spikes]).

When finalized, the Secretary-General was pleased to endorse the design. But how to get a Commonwealth of Nations' logo approved by more than thirty governments?! A lengthy bureaucratic process seemed inevitable, with the potential for special committees and sub-committees and endless debates.

As a possible way forward, I suggested that the Information Division might begin incorporating the logo in its various publications. Derek Ingram, in running the Gemini news agency, featured the freshly minted logo in Commonwealth stories and graphics. This initial "testing of the waters" went off smoothly. So then it was decided to become bolder, and begin incorporating the logo in official Secretariat stationery and documents being prepared for Commonwealth meetings.

No questions were raised in any Commonwealth quarters; indeed, some member countries started to use the logo on their own Commonwealth materials. As everyone seemed happy to assume that this was unquestionably the Commonwealth logo, Arnold and I concluded that it would be safe to go ahead with the Secretary-General's pennant and the production of Commonwealth flags.

The evolution of the logo was well on track, and it had a public airing at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Ottawa in 1973.

Thus by spontaneous consensus the Commonwealth's logo had been launched and accepted, although never the subject of a formal adoption process.

The basic format of the logo has stood the test of time and, even with modifications over the years, is readily recognized as the Commonwealth's enduring symbol.

In Canberra, some thirty years after the logo was born, I received an inquiry from the Secretariat in London. Researchers were reviewing aspects of the evolution of the modern Commonwealth, and the origin of the logo.

The researchers were stumped and frustrated. They could not find any paper trail tracing the approval process for the Commonwealth logo!! I was happy to reveal the unorthodox steps that, with a minimum of fuss, gave the Commonwealth its distinctive emblem.