‘Difficult decisions’: King Charles’ upcoming Australian tour reveals major health clue

Details of King Charles’ upcoming Australian tour have just been released – and they reveal worrying signs about the monarch’s health.

Every Australian citizen is legally entitled to a free portrait of King Charles from their Federal MP.

I’d love to know how many people have, since his accession two years ago, actually taken their local member up on this hard-to-beat offer. (I’m guessing the entire list consists of only diehard monarchist Tony Abbott and too few retirees to warrant renting a minibus).

Still, get yours in now if you think you might have made the cut for the King’s impending arrival to our shores next month.

This week, Buckingham Palace revealed the first specifics about Charles’ and his other half Queen Camilla’s first tour of the Antipodean nether regions – and it’s not exactly stirring stuff.

We all need to make our very best impressions, because it’ll be a blink-and-miss-it experience.

It’s hard to ignore the signs of the wear that the events of this year are taking on the King.

King Charles’ Aussie tour has been scaled back ‘on medical advice’. Picture: Jan Kruger/Getty Images

You will have only four days to catch a glimpse of Their Majesties – and then only if you live in Sydney or Canberra. There will be no night engagements at all, not even if Camilla fancies trying to go incognito at Jacksons on George for a quick Midori Illusion.

“We’ve had to make some difficult decisions about the program,” a Buckingham Palace spokesman told TheTelegraph of the tour.

New Zealand had originally been on the itinerary, but things had to be lopped off with the schedule “adapted in line with doctors’ advice”.

Suggestions that Fiji might get a look in have long since petered out.

“The logistics of the tour,” according to The Telegraph, have been “scaled back on medical advice”.

The trip has been planned to “factor in some rest periods”, which would seem to amount to at least two days worth, despite Their Majesties having flown 22 hours and gone to the effort of finding Jack Russell sitters to get here. (Of the nine-day trip in total, the King and Queen will spend those four in Australia and three days in Samoa, where Charles will preside over the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting).

The program has been structured such that Charles’ and Camilla’s “energies are preserved to be at their best”, which I’m imagining will involve a lot of lying down while a valet rubs bunions and reads the Gardener’s Almanac aloud to a supine King.

This year’s royal tour will be very different to the last one, in 2018. Picture: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images

None of this is a criticism, mind you – more some concerned pointing out that when Their Majesties touch down in Canberra and wonder where the rest of it is, this tour will not look like any we have seen previously.

Off the table will be any interaction with koalas, chlamydia-free or otherwise, or them visiting any other states or territories. Bevies of schoolchildren bussed in for the express purpose and armed with tiny flags seem likely to be left safely in classrooms learning their times tables.

One of the only usual bits of visual choreography we will see will be when Their Majesties are at Government House, though there is no indication at this stage whether kangaroos will be provided, forcibly or otherwise. (I don’t think animal consent really comes into matters of statecraft).

One thing to look forward to will be the King and Queen attending a community barbecue in Western Sydney (“a staple of Australian culture” as The Telegraph diligently explained to readers), so look forward to some sort of photo op involving an anointed sovereign awkwardly holding a sausage and pretending to know how to eat it in a dignified fashion.

More sauce, Your Majesties?

Already this year, those inside the Palace have expressed concerns over the King coming here at all.

One insider told the Daily Beast that “there are plenty of people who think a long-haul foreign tour is unwise when you have cancer”.

“The problem is, he knows that if he doesn’t do a trip to Australia as king now, it will probably never happen,” they added.

I know, this truncated, trimmed tour is not that much of a surprise given the King is undergoing treatment for cancer and is hardly the most spry of spring chickens at nearly 76.

However, none of these newly released details will do anything to promote the image of a hale-ish and in the vicinity-of-hearty King, even now more than six months after returning to frontline duties.

Queen Elizabeth II was 85 and Prince Philip was 90 when they visited Australia in 2011 - for 10 days. Picture: Lincoln Baker-Pool/Getty Images

The King’s age alone hardly goes to explaining this trimmed, pared down schedule. Consider

his mother’s own venerable example. The last time the late Queen visited our shores, in 2011, she was 10 years older than Charles is currently (she was 85) and spent 10 days in Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth.

She brought along Prince Philip and his liver spots, at the advanced age of 90, who managed to avoid any sort of even minorly racist incident. Good show!

The last time Charles and Camilla were in Australia – in 2018 for the Commonwealth Games (lucky them) – they were here for 50 per cent more time (six days) and managed to visit Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Bundaberg, Lady Elliot Island, Cairns, Mossman Gorge, Nhulunbuy, Yirrkala and Darwin.

The time before that was in 2015 when they visited four states and spent a total of 11 days in our southerly neck of the woods.

You get my drift.

More than two years after becoming the King of Australia, Charles is finally going to do some Commonwealth gladhanding, but having waited this long, it’s hardly going to be any sort of significant charm offensive.

So let’s make it count, shall we? Get those portraits. Wave those flags. And hell, surely someone somewhere in Canberra can rustle up a busload of kids.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles

Originally published as ‘Difficult decisions’: King Charles’ upcoming Australian tour reveals major health clue