King Charles to visit Australians of the Year Richard Scolyer and Georgina Long on first Australian royal tour

King Charles III will meet melanoma experts Georgina Long and Richard Scolyer, who is undergoing experimental treatment for his own brain cancer, on his first royal visit to Australia as monarch.

King Charles and Queen Camilla at Buckingham Palace in June. Picture: Getty Images

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The King will meet melanoma experts Georgina Long and Richard Scolyer, who is undergoing experimental treatment for his own brain cancer, on his first royal visit to Australia as monarch.

The first insight into the King’s itinerary on his visit next month has revealed he will embark on a compacted tour of Sydney and Canberra, with doctors advising against a longer visit given his own battle with cancer.

Charles and Queen Camilla will visit NSW and the ACT between October 18 and 23, and will receive a parliamentary reception in Canberra, lay a wreath at the Australian War Memorial, meet with charity heads, and tour landmarks including the Sydney Opera House.

It is a far cry from his mother’s first visit as monarch when Queen Elizabeth II visited every capital city except Darwin and 40 country towns on her Australia tour in 1954.

Charles will meet the joint Australians of the Year, Professors Scolyer and Long, to discuss their work treating melanoma using immunotherapy.

After Professor Scolyer was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in May last year, he decided to forgo the traditional cocktail of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and instead tried an experimental combination of immunotherapy drugs devised by Professor Long. Professor Scolyer has since outlived the 14-month estimated survival period for the fatal disease.

The King’s second year on the throne has been hampered by the disease, with Catherine, the Princess of Wales, also going public with her battle with an unspecified form of cancer.

Since Charles returned to public duties at the end of April, planning for the royal couple’s first tour to Australia since they assumed the throne continued after speculation he might be forced to cancel the trip.

Security concerns mean specific details of the royal visit have been tightly held, though it is known the King plans to visit the CSIRO in Canberra to discuss cutting-edge research on bushfires.

The royal couple will also visit the Royal Botanic Gardens in the nation’s capital, with Camilla to visit charity Givit to discuss the issue of domestic violence in Australia.

In Sydney, the royal couple will conduct a naval fleet review on Sydney Harbour and attend a community BBQ.

The King will also visit a housing project in Sydney, join a roundtable on sustainability and meet with First Nations representatives to learn about their work supporting community.

The Queen will visit a library and meet children who are participating in her essay competitions, and representatives of a food charity for refugees.

Princess Catherine announced in a family video released on Tuesday (AEST) that she had completed her chemotherapy treatment.

In the video released by Buckingham Palace announcing her return, the Princess said her own priority would be staying ­“cancer-free”.

Catherine said her cancer journey had been “complex, scary and unpredictable for everyone” but had given her a “new perspective on everything” and a renewed focus on the “simple yet important things in life”.

The 42-year-old princess shocked the world when she announced in March that tests had revealed the presence of cancer following major abdominal surgery in January.

An Australian royal visit has been a personal priority of Charles since the death of his mother in September 2022, and scheduling such an extensive trip has posed a challenge for the monarch.