How Charles staved off a republic as prince – and is doing it again as the King
By Rob Harris
King Charles’ deep love for Australia, its way of life and its sense of humour hasn’t always been reciprocated.
Despite frequent visits from across the other side of the world since he was a teenager, some Australians haven’t always grasped his goonish playfulness.
In 1983, when he toured with his wife, Princess Diana, and nine-month-old son, the then-prince of Wales received scores of letters from disgruntled, animal-loving locals after he joked about feeding baby William on warm milk and minced kangaroo.
There was a lot riding on that visit, 41 years ago. Championed by a popular new prime minister, Bob Hawke, a new wave of republicanism was sweeping Australia.
Before the tour, Hawke had flippantly dismissed the heir to the Australian throne as a “nice young bloke”.
On March 6, 1983, just 12 days before Charles and Diana were set to fly Down Under, a television interviewer asked Hawke if Charles would make a good king of Australia.
Charles and Diana in Canberra in 1983 with Bob and Hazel Hawke. Credit: Getty
“I don’t think we will be talking about kings of Australia forever more,” he replied.
It was wishful thinking. The Times would declare the month-long tour an “unqualified success” while The Evening Standard went one better in proclaiming that, largely thanks to the popularity of the princess, it had set the republican cause back 10 years.
By 1994, Charles, separated from his wife and waning in popularity, said the re-emerging republican debate in Australia was a sign of a “mature and self-confident nation”.
But even after 16 trips to Australia — this will be Charles’ 17th — the King still feels the country is owed his debt and gratitude. He has often referred to the six months spent here, at Geelong Grammar’s Timbertop campus in the Victorian Alps in 1966, as “by far the best part” of his education.
Charles at Timbertop in 1966.Credit: Fairfax Media
It was a grand plan for the young prince to, as newspaper columnist Keith Dunstan wrote at the time, “get to know the Commonwealth and for the Commonwealth to get to know him”.
Since then, he’s been kissed by a model on a Perth beach, very nearly felled by an assassin in Sydney and fallen from a horse at Warwick Farm. He arrives in Australia this week as a familiar face, but a new king. He is the first male British sovereign to step foot on Australian soil.
Prince Charles takes a fall at Warwick Farm in 1983 in front of a crowd of 10,000 Australians. He was unhurt and later joked about the incident.Credit: AP
He also lands with his second wife, Queen Camilla, after new polling suggests that despite predictions republican sentiment would flourish after the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth II, one in four of us has a more favourable view of Charles now than they did before he was crowned last year.
Of the 1049 Australians who responded to the survey commissioned by Rupert Murdoch’s long-time republic-supporting News Corp tabloids, one in three (33 per cent) thought Australia should become a republic.
This contrasted with 45 per cent who said Australia should remain a monarchy; 22 per cent said they were unsure. In the 1999 referendum, Australians voted against becoming a republic by a margin of 55 per cent to 45 per cent.
While republican groups have been busy organising meetings and selling merchandise, including a tea towel bidding “farewell” to the monarchy, the federal government has moved further away from plans to hold a referendum on the subject.
Trade Minister Don Farrell said that even if the government was returned next year, there was no immediate prospect of raising the republican debate.
“As we’ve just seen 12 months ago, it’s very hard to successfully get a referendum up in Australia, and the Albanese government has no intention of resuming the issue of the republic in the foreseeable future,” he said.
Charles, we know thanks to correspondence leaked by the Australian Republican Movement to the Daily Mail last week, believes that “whether Australia becomes a republic” is a “matter for the Australian public to decide”.
The letter, sent by Buckingham Palace, added that the King and Queen had a “deep love and affection” for Australia.
Dr George Gross, royal historian and visiting research fellow at King’s College London, says the King’s determination for the tour to go ahead, despite his cancer diagnosis and treatment, shows he wants to further cement the close ties of Australia and the wider region with the UK, given the geopolitical significance of the Indo-Pacific region.
“It is a tour of significant firsts,” Gross says. “Although Charles has travelled to Australia many times, this will be his first visit there as sovereign and the first tour to the country by a reigning monarch since 2011.
“It will also be the King’s first official overseas tour since his cancer diagnosis and his first to a Commonwealth realm.”
He adds that there is a touch of sentimentality, too.
“It is notable, too, that he is visiting Australia in the year after his coronation, as this echoes the 1954 tour by his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, following her coronation in 1953,” Gross says.
A snub from state premiers seems unlikely to unsettle Charles either. At his school near Mansfield, classmates didn’t hold back when calling the future king a “Pommy bastard”.
“While I was here, I had the Pommy bits bashed off me,” he said years later. “Like chips off an old block.
“Look what it has done for me. By God, it was good for the character.”
You get the feeling he’s seen it all before. And he’s not going anywhere in a hurry.
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