King Charles drops cancelled word ‘walkabout’ from Australian tour

In their first visit to Australia as King and Queen, Charles and Camilla will drop the term “walkabout” to describe encounters with the public, as Buckingham Palace strips the term from the royal itinerary to avoid offending Indigenous communities.

While the King and Queen still plan to meet and greet members of the community at a handful of events on their five-day visit to Sydney and Canberra from October 18 to 22, “walkabout” will now be replaced on the official itinerary with the phrase “opportunity to meet the public”.

The word “walkabout” was once widely used to describe solo journeys or initiation rites, but many Indigenous groups find it offensive when used colloquially by others to describe a holiday, a hike or going missing. The 2016 dance festival “Lets Go Walkabout” had to change its name after the organisers were accused of cultural appropriation.

The royal walkabout has been a feature of visits since Queen Elizabeth adopted the term during her 1970 visit to New Zealand, when she left her official car to shake hands with fans who had gathered to see her.

But the King is returning to Australia as a monarch determined to modernise the royal family at a time of heightened awareness of anti-colonial sentiment.

That is in contrast to his father, Prince Philip, who had a long record of uncomfortable gaffes, including asking an Indigenous dancer in 2002 “do you still throw spears at each other”. He congratulated a hiker in Papua New Guinea for not being eaten by local villagers.

King Charles and Queen Camilla will tour Australia in October.Credit: AP

Prince William, now the Prince of Wales, and wife Catherine had a disastrous eight-day Caribbean tour in 2022, where they were met with protests by Indigenous groups and placards demanding royal apologies for slavery.

The prince’s expression of “profound sorrow” as “slavery was abhorrent and it never should have happened”, did not appease the royal family’s critics.

The King, still then the prince of Wales, had more success in Barbados in 2021 as the island nation became a republic, in a speech that acknowledged “the appalling atrocity of slavery, which forever stains our history”. He repeated this message in Rwanda in 2022 at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, where he stood in for his ailing mother.

The royal couple will fly out of Australia to preside over the next CHOGM in Samoa, with Buckingham Palace still on high alert for any turn of phrase that might turn people against the monarchy.

Their busy schedule in Australia ranges from a formal visit to Parliament House in Canberra to a relaxed barbecue with community leaders in Sydney, with space left on the agenda for yet-to-be-announced surprises.

The King will also visit the CSIRO headquarters and attend a separate meeting about the impact of climate change, reflecting the progressive, environmentally conscious image he cultivated as a prince.

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