Armidale

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ARMIDALE

State : New South Wales
Incorporated into : 2000 Armidale Dumaresq Shire

Official blazon

Arms : Or, on a Pile Vert, between two Mitres Gules and in base an open Book proper bound and charged with a Rose Gules barbed and seeded, a Ram's Head caboshed proper.
Crest : On a Wreath of the Colours, on Water Barry Wavy, a Mount, thereon a Tower en circled by a wreath of Waratah fructed all proper.
Motto: 'The Fortunes of the House Stand Firm'.

Origin/meaning

The arms were granted on 5 August 1964.

The sheep's head represents the major local industry, both fat lambs and wool. The open book represents the city' s other main industry, education, with several secondary colleges, the first rural Teachers' College and the University of New England. The English rose is intended to symbolise the central situation of the city in the Northern Tablelands district (AKA New England).

This small city is also famous for its 2 cathedrals and 2 bishops, Anglican and Roman Catholic, symbolised by the red mitres. The crest is somewhat of a pun on the name "army - dale", with a fort within a wreath. There was never a fort in Armidale, but a prison once stood on the prominent hill to the south of the city. It was replaced by the Teacher's College buildings in the 1920's.

The crest is a tower, representing the Armidale Castle on the Isle of Skye in Scotland after which the town was named in 1839. The circlet of waratahs (New South Wales state flower) continues the former badge of the city, a single bloom issuing from a coronet.

The motto is an English translation of line 209 from Virgil's fourth Georgic.

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