Description
The shield has a silver (argent) field, with a rippled blue (azure) and silver (argent) base. A black swan in its natural colours swims on the upper blue ripple.
The crest is the Royal Crown in its proper colours on a wreath or torse of black (sable) and gold (or) between two Kangaroo paw flowers in their natural colours of red and green.
The supporters are a Red Kangaroo on the dexter and sinister (the viewer's right and left) holding up the shield. They are each depicted 'proper', or in natural colours. Each Kangaroo holds in their forepaw a boomerang without any marks or symbols on it, and they stand upon a grassy compartment.
There is no motto with the coat of arms.
The official blazon, or heraldic description is contained in the Royal Warrant, and reads: For Arms: Argent on a base wavy Azure charged with a barrulet wavy Argent a Black Swan naiant proper. And for Crest: On a Wreath Or and Sable The Royal Crown between two Kangaroo Paw (Anigosanthos Manglesii) flowers slipped proper. And for Supporters: On either side a Kangaroo holding in the exterior fore-paw a Boomerang proper.
The illustration in the Royal Warrant apparently shows the Arms with helmet and mantling, but the Western Australian Government has been advised that "With the consent of the Garter Principal King of Arms, the Arms will be produced, for the use in Western Australia, in abbreviated form without the helmet and mantling. A helmet and mantling is depicted in correct heraldic form in the Warrant to conform to heraldic principles, but omission thereof for general usage is in line with the usage of the Commonwealth of Australia and of other Australian States".
Read more about this topic: Coat Of Arms Of Western Australia
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, and that Missionaries of that description from [France] would avail more than those who should endeavor to tame them by precepts of religion or philosophy.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The great object in life is Sensation—to feel that we exist, even though in pain; it is this “craving void” which drives us to gaming, to battle, to travel, to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)