‘Significant step’: Clearest sign yet of Charles’ ‘positive’ recovery

Plans for King’s Charles’ trip to Australia are being cautiously fleshed after undergoing cancer treatment, with invitations being considered to attend the Melbourne Cup and Everest Race Day.

Plans for King’s Charles’ trip to Australia are being cautiously fleshed out as he slowly returns to work after undergoing treatment for cancer, with invitations being considered to attend the Melbourne Cup and Everest Race Day.

As palace aides stress the message is one of “caution” with nothing being “ruled in or out”, the King had told his doctors he is adamant he will make his first trip to Australia as monarch in October.

Aides have said he is considering invitations to attend Melbourne Cup on November 5, which he was first at with his late wife Princess Diana in 1985 before returning with Camilla when she was the Duchess of Cornwall in 2012.

Royal sources say King Charles is showing “positive” signs in his recovery from cancer. Picture: Getty Images

King Charles has also been invited to The Everest Race Day in Sydney on October 19, when it is hoped he will present the trophy for a race entitled the King Charles III Stakes.

The highly anticipated visit to Australia will also include making an appearance at the bicentenary celebrations of the NSW Parliament’s upper house.

The Australia trip has been scaled back to two weeks rather than three and will include down time for the monarch who has had chemotherapy since February.

It has been reported NSW tourism executives have also extended invitations to the King’s travel planners for a trip to Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo, the Queen Victoria Building in the heart of Sydney and its iconic Opera House.

King Charles shook hands with wellwishers on Easter Sunday. Picture: Getty Images

The King is also set to travel 800 kilometres to celebrate his 19th wedding anniversary next week with Queen Camilla at Birkhall on the Balmoral Estate in Scotland.

He is said to be “itching to take the reins” and get back to his public role after a positive response to his “sophisticated” cancer treatment.

The property is so close to his heart that he chose it for his and Camilla’s honeymoon destination after their wedding in 2005.

The royal couple also spent New Year’s Day there last year.

King Charles’ road ahead and his recovery from his cancer diagnosis looks “positive”, a Palace source said.

Last week he hosted a Buckingham Palace reception with interfaith leaders.

He also led the family at Easter, emerging from St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle to shake hands with around 60 wellwishers.

Queen Camilla and King Charles III during the Easter Mattins Service at Windsor Castle. Picture: Getty Images

A palace source said then that the reappearance “was a significant step”.

They admitted: “The King has responded to treatment very encouragingly and his doctors were thus able to adjust their guidance slightly on what His Majesty is now able to undertake.”

His aide was clear to point out his “treatment continues” and “caution is the watchword”, but King Charles would resume public-facing duties in the spring and summer.

They said all plans are subject to medical guidance. But they added: “There is great hope and optimism from doctors and the patient.”

The King is “supercharging” plans for the two-week trip which will also encompass New Zealand and Samoa when he travels in October for the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (CHOGM) from October 21-25.

Charles greeted by public during a visit to Brisbane on April 4, 2018. Picture: AAP

It is customary the year after a monarch is crowned for them to visit Australia.

A state visit of the king’s favourite commonwealth country is the biggest and most significant royal tour for a British monarch. Queen Elizabeth II visited 16 times, the first visit was in 1954 and finally in 2011.

Philip Benwell, national chairman of the 62.000-strong Australian Monarchist League, said his members had already begun preparing to receive the king by sourcing Australian flags, encouraging people to meet and greet the king and conducting an intensive social media campaign of welcome after seeing him looking well at Easter.

“It will hearten the Australian people to meet their king and rejoice at opportunity to see him finally on Australian soil,” he said.

“Once the news of his cancer diagnosis came through we suspended our negotiations but after seeing him on a meet and greet on Easter Sunday looking so well, we resumed operations.”

Originally published as ‘Significant step’: Clearest sign yet of Charles’ ‘positive’ recovery