A history of royal tours Down Under: From a young Queen Elizabeth II to Harry and Meghan’s baby joy
King Charles’s first visit to Australia as monarch will begin on Friday
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Your support makes all the difference.The royal family has been regularly touring and visiting Australia since the late 19th century, with the country playing host to several key moments in their history.
As King Charles prepares to undertake his first official tour of Australia and Samoa as monarch, The Independent takes a look back at the most memorable royal tours in recent history.
The King, 75, will arrive in Sydney tomorrow with Queen Camilla, where the couple will be honoured by a special light show displaying images of previous royal tours on the sails of the Sydney Opera House.
Other key events planned for the eight-day tour include a Fleet Review of the Royal Australian Navy in Sydney Harbour, as well as a meeting with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at Parliament House in Canberra.
There will be no evening events on the tour due to the King’s ongoing cancer battle, and while he will be temporarily pausing his treatment on the trip, he will be accompanied by two doctors as a precaution.
Queen Elizabeth’s first visit as Australia’s reigning monarch – 1954
Queen Elizabeth II’s first tour of Australia in 1954 saw the young monarch undertake a staggering 58 days of engagements with Prince Philip, where they visited 57 cities and towns.
Elizabeth, then 27, drew a colossal crowd when she arrived at Sydney Harbour in February 1954 and was greeted by an estimated one million onlookers from the city’s then population of 1,863,161.
Then the biggest tour of Australia ever planned, it saw Elizabeth and Philip undertake many engagements, from delivering a civic address to thousands of schoolchildren to opening a session of parliament.
King Charles travels to Australia to study – 1966
Though not an official tour, the then-Prince Charles did visit Australia to study for six months when he was a teenager.
The trip, which saw Charles spend two terms at a boarding school campus in Victoria, was described by the prince, then 17, as ‘the best’ experience of his educational life.
Now, almost six decades later, this week’s visit will mark Charles’s 17th trip to Australia.
King Charles’s solo visit and the gunshots that followed – 1994
One of the most dramatic moments in royal history took place during King Charles’s 1994 solo tour of Australia. While making a speech to mark Australia Day, which falls on January 25, the then-prince was shot at while on stage in Sydney.
Charles was unharmed in the incident, which was later revealed to be the actions of David Kang, who fired two blank shots at the royal in protest of the country’s treatment of Cambodian asylum seekers, who were being held in detention camps.
Queen Elizabeth’s final tour of Australia – 2011
What was to be Queen Elizabeth’s final tour of Australia took place in October 2011, when the monarch and Prince Philip visited the country for 11 days.
The trip saw the queen, then 85, once again undertake a packed schedule of engagements that saw her open the Royal Children’s hospital and attend the Commonwealth heads of government meeting where key issues of the day were discussed.
While questions have been consistently raised about Australia’s status as a constitutional monarchy, actor Hugh Jackman said even Republicans held the Queen in high regard.
“Even the Republicans, the ones in Australia who want to see Australia move on, still have great respect and love for the Queen,” he said. “I’ve never heard anyone say different.”
Prince William and Kate Middleton’s first tour as a married couple - 2014
The Prince and Princess of Wales undertook a ten-day tour of Australia and New Zealand in April 2014, where they were notably accompanied by Prince George, then less than a year old.
Their packed schedule of engagements included meeting those affected by bushfires in the Blue Mountains the previous year.
They also visited Australia Zoo, where a new bilby enclosure had been especially named after George by the Australian government.
Harry and Meghan’s first and only tour of Australia - 2018
While it has been some time since the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were working royals, in the early part of their marriage, they carried out what was widely considered to be a successful 16-tour tour of Australia.
Coinciding with Harry’s Invictus Games, which celebrates the sporting achievements of wounded, sick and injured service people, the trip saw Harry officially open the Paralympics-style event.
The trip was also notably when Meghan announced that she was pregnant with their first child, Prince Archie.
Other engagements included a visit to Sydney Opera House, Taronga Zoo and Bondi Beach.
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