Grief and plans, a world apart

On this side of the world and 17,000km away in Britain, grieving continues for the monarch most people have known their entire lives. On the six-hour journey of the Queen’s cortege from Balmoral to Edinburgh, highlanders lined the roadsides of villages, towns and farming lands, forming guards of honours with tractors, harvesters and on horseback. As the procession reached Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, thousands of wellwishers burst into applause. Princess Anne curtsied to her mother’s coffin as it was carried into the Palace of Holyroodhouse. It was announced that King Charles, his siblings and their families would walk behind the coffin on Monday night AEST when it was to be moved to St Giles’ Cathedral, where the people of Scotland would pay their final respects.

In Australia, the focus switched to upcoming plans to cement the King’s relationship with the nation he first visited as a schoolboy in 1966. The new Prince and Princess of Wales will return here early next year, possibly with their three children, during a school holiday. Later, after his coronation, the King will make his 17th visit to this nation, and his first visit as head of state, with Camilla, the Queen Consort. He is likely to return in 2026 when Victoria will host the Commonwealth Games. Plans will be discussed with Anthony Albanese and Governor-General David Hurley during their visit to London for the Queen’s funeral.

As the King addressed both houses of the British parliament on Monday for the first time as sovereign, he intervened personally to make sure that Australia’s representative, acting high commissioner Lynette Wood, and the representatives of other Five Eyes countries, New Zealand and Canada, were seated front row in the royal box. The gesture underlined the value of those ties.

On Tuesday we report on the origins of the new King’s close relationship with this nation, forged over six months as a 17-year-old student at Geelong Grammar’s Timbertop campus in the foothills of the Australian Alps near Mansfield, in northeast Victoria. Stuart McGregor, then 18, who shared the rough living quarters with Charles, recalls it was an “extremely formative” period for the future king. They remain friends. The prince was preparing for his A-levels, Mr McGregor recalls, and enjoyed freedom and seclusion to an extent he had not previously experienced. The setting of the adventure fostered his love of nature.

In Sydney on Australia Day 1988 during bicentennial celebrations, Charles described his time at Timbertop as “quite frankly … the best part of my education and something I shall always cherish”. It gave him an insight, he said, “into the character of this country and the individuals who have shaped it by the force of their personalities and by their infectious good humour”. He “had the Pommy bits bashed off me, like chips off an old block”, he said. For a teenager destined to be King of Australia, it was valuable experience.