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IT was billed by some Down Under as a “farewell tour”, where Australia would finally turn its back on Great Britain and the Royal Family.
But King Charles’s visit ended up a barnstorming success and, instead of giving the cold shoulder, Aussies packed the streets and asked His Majesty: “When are you coming back?”
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Now it is being hailed as the tour that set Australian republicanism back a decade.
Like every royal visit, there was a phoney war in the lead-up to Charles and wife Camilla’s arrival, where things were expected to go wrong.
Pathetic T-shirts appeared, calling the trip the Royal Family’s “Farewell Tour”.
These were branded “tasteless” given Charles’s cancer fight, which has sadly shortened this Antipodean adventure.
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And Britain’s fringe anti-monarchy group Republic dispatched its CEO Graham Smith to Oz, who appeared to spend most of his time posting social media snaps from a beach.
There were whispers that the Aussies could never love King Charles the way they adored his late mother Queen Elizabeth, and now was the time for Republicans to strike.
I lost count of the number of good Aussie people
who said, ‘Those parliamentarians don’t speak for us’. The same decent folk turned out in their
thousands at every opportunityMatt Wilkinson
Six cowardly State Premiers even refused to attend a glittering reception at the nation’s capital, Canberra, with the King and Queen — one of the planned highlights of the tour.
But it backfired the moment Charles and Camilla touched down in Sydney last Friday night.
I lost count of the number of good Aussie people who said: “Those parliamentarians don’t speak for us.”
‘We want the King’
It was the same decent folk who spoke the loudest with their feet and their voices, turning out in their thousands at every opportunity to meet and cheer the royal couple.
When Australia opened its arms, the King and Queen accepted the warm embrace.
On Sunday morning, they were clearly buoyed by the support shown by hundreds of well-wishers who crammed together outside St Thomas’ Church to see them.
Many flag-waving fans said they wanted to show their “appreciation” to the King for making the trip when he could have chosen not to, due to his cancer diagnosis.
I was also in Canberra when thousands — including a sneezing alpaca — braved the heat to line up to cheer the King and Queen.
And I was at Sydney Opera House, where a sell-out 8,000 tickets were eagerly picked up and 2,000 more crammed into vantage points to get a glimpse.
They could have accommodated more people, but needed space for the couple to stroll and meet the locals.
At all three of these walkabouts, or “meeting the people events”, as organisers wish them to be called, there was an overwhelming sense that the Royal Family have the Aussies’ love and support.
And each time, it was noticeable that there were cries of, “We want the King” when Charles and Camilla briefly split up to meet as many people as possible between them.
This was in no way a knocking of dutiful Camilla, who also carried out solo work highlighting domestic violence and literacy — proving she now has a global voice.
But the contrast to Charles’s trip to Oz with Diana in 1983 was stark and obvious.
Australia’s then-PM, Bob Hawke, had hoped the country would become a republic, but Chaz and Di’s visit was said to have set the cause back ten years.
During that tour, Charles even joked that he needed two wives, because the huge crowds were so keen to meet Diana, rather than him.
But this time there was no question who the A-list star was — the King himself.
No doubt current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who invited the King and Queen to Australia having campaigned for a referendum on republicanism, will be enduring similar nightmares that the trip has set back the chances of a successful anti-monarchy vote.
While the republican voices were drowned out and pushed aside, it was the opinions of Australia’s Aboriginal people that came across loudest.
I was in Parliament House when senator Lidia Thorpe stormed into the chamber and accused the King of “genocide”, demanding he return land.
She even screamed: “You are not our King.”
There were groans when she made her protest as she has a history of grandstanding in Parliament, where she will not be putting herself up for re-election.
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While her message had some support across Australia, her methods did not — and respected professor Marcia Langton, a leading indigenous academic, slammed Thorpe’s intervention as “embarrassing and shameful”.
She even offered an apology to the King on behalf of the indigenous Australians.
But Charles IS Lidia Thorpe’s king, and he is the king of all Australians.
And if she had engaged with him rather than hurled abuse to steal headlines, she may have had more success furthering her cause.
After all, she burst into Parliament just seconds after the King’s speech, where he vowed to “respect the traditional owners of the lands” and hailed the “courage and hope” in Australia’s “journey towards reconciliation”.
He also praised the “wisdom” of the indigenous people.
It was just a few hours later when the King was faced with a more sensible opportunity to hear from wiser indigenous representatives.
He met elders at the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence, in Redfern, Sydney, which was a warm, engaging and positive social space, and perhaps the quiet highlight of the adventure.
Respected elder Uncle Allan Murray took the opportunity to calmly make the King aware of his people’s desire to “achieve our own sovereignty”.
‘Charles looked tired’
Afterwards, he told me he blamed the Royal Family for his people’s 250-year struggle, but added: “I think he listened to what I said.”
Fellow indigenous elder Joyce Wymarra, 81, had a private chat with the King, and chose to raise the issue of climate change affecting her home — a cause Charles has passionately led from the front for decades.
Palace sources are keen to point out that the thousands of Aussies who turned out to welcome the King and Queen are far more representative of local sentiment than one lone protester known for her stunts.
The trip was summed up in that wonderful moment
when elder Welsh declined to shake the King’s hand. Instead, he wanted to give him a hug. Charles said: ‘Hugs are good’Matt Wilkinson
And they are right. People Down Under appreciate the Royal Family.
It was clear that respect ran both ways last week. Throughout the curtailed tour, the couple expressed their fondness for Australia.
Charles spoke of his “love” for life there during a speech, and reminded people how much he enjoyed visiting Oz for the first time in the 1960s.
He was a pupil at Victoria’s Timbertop school in 1966 and has described it as “by far the best part” of his education.
The monarch also hailed Aussie grub “top tucker” at a community barbecue and learned how to flip sausages “the Aussie way”.
But for me, the trip was summed up in that wonderful moment when elder Uncle James Michael “Widdy” Welsh, 72, declined to shake the King’s hand.
Instead of the formal gesture, he wanted to give Charles a hug.
The King responded with three words that encapsulated the trip — “hugs are good”.
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“Widdy” is a kind and heroic figure who was part of Australia’s “stolen generation” — the thousands who were taken from their Aboriginal parents and put into children’s homes.
James told me afterwards: “There is too much anger in the world.”
That is a sentiment the King would no doubt share.
And the fury and fear that threatened to overshadow the six-day trip melted away into satisfied smiles and laughter before the couple waved goodbye from the steps of their plane on Wednesday.
Just like during the King’s touching interaction with “Widdy”, Aussies offered a warm embrace that he immediately accepted.
Oz has waited 13 years for a monarch to meet them Down Under after ill health meant the late Queen could not travel.
The Sun exclusively revealed in April that Charles had ordered aides to “supercharge” his diary and demanded the Australia tour go ahead.
Yes, he did look tired at times, especially when I saw him up close and personal in the searing heat of Canberra greeting well-wishers.
There was a doctor on hand at every engagement, but that is standard when he travels abroad.
It is a massive credit to him and the royal household that the tour went ahead.
And, barring one rabble-rousing senator, there were no missteps.
The King and Queen, and the Aussie public, really showed up the politicians who turned their backs, as well as the desperate “Farewell Tour” crowd, for what they really are.
They also managed to change people’s minds.
When will they return?
Schindler’s Ark author Thomas Keneally, a famed Republican, wrote in the Aussie Press that the King was “not the adversary of an Australian republic”.
And he thanked him for reminding Australia of its “kinship with the British Isles”.
In the letters pages of the Sydney Morning Herald, one reader said the royal visit was a “welcome respite” from “inane politics”.
They added: “It also reminds us of the enduring stability of our constitutional monarchy model of government. We are fortunate to have such a green and humanitarian head of state in King Charles. The republican movement appears to be more a republican moment.”
“Hear, hear”, many Aussies will echo.
A poll before the trip revealed 50 per cent of Australians thought the King was doing a good job — a better result than their PM got.
Another poll now should place that number even higher.
There was nervousness about big royal tours being faced with calls for reparations, protests and republicanism after William and Kate’s disastrous trip to the Caribbean two years ago.
There will be many people extremely disappointed if this was the King’s last visit to Australia because it has proved that these tours can also be a success.
The questions Down Under on many people’s lips were, when will they return?
And, if they won’t, can you now send William, Kate, George, Charlotte and Louis?
Over to you, Kensington Palace.
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