Bigger than the Fab Four and Swift: The Queen who rocked Sydney

Nothing compared with the celebrity of the young Queen Elizabeth when she visited Australia in 1954 with an entourage bigger than a rock star’s.

She was the Taylor Swift of her era, says Margot Riley, a curator at the State Library of NSW. The 27-year-old Queen pulled bigger crowds than the Beatles, who visited 10 years later. Their crowds were only a third the size of those who flocked to see the young Windsors. And all up, an estimated 600,000 people saw Swift live.

Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh at the SCG in 1954.Credit: Fairfax Media

The late Queen’s star power on that visit – the first to Australia by a reigning monarch – made it the single biggest event yet in Australia’s history. An estimated 75 per cent of Australia’s 9 million population did but see her passing by.

In contrast, some experts say the House of Windsor today is another entertainment celebrity franchise battling for eyeballs among a public that prefers fiction to fact.

Hugo Vickers, biographer and expert on the royal family, said that, considering it was an era without television, it was extraordinary that so many Australians travelled great distances to see her.

Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh (second from right) watch the surf carnival staged for them at Bondi Beach on February 6, 1954.Credit: State Library of NSW

With support for an Australian republic ranging from 38 per cent to 52 per cent, there is doubt whether her son King Charles, 75, and Queen Camilla, 77, who arrived on Friday night, will draw crowds.

Today the House of Windsor’s real family dramas compete with fictionalised and often satirical tales of them and other aristocracy.

These range from The Spanish Princess to The Prince, The Royals, White Princess, The Empress, The Windsors and Downton Abbey. (Royal satire though has always been popular, reaching its peak in the 18th century with poo jokes.)

Netflix reported that 75 million households around the world watched The Crown, the Peter Morgan fictionalised account. It covered nearly 60 years of the royal family including the famous 1995 interview with the late princess Diana. When asked about Mrs Parker Bowles, now Queen Camilla, Diana said, “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”

In the same way that we binge on streaming services today, Queen Elizabeth’s visit in 1954 was can’t-miss real life.

Riley said: “She was glamorous, young, beautifully dressed, and elegant.”

She was all those things in a country starving for glamour. “She just embodied it all, plus she had a gorgeous looking husband. It was such a dream package. It really couldn’t fail.”

Elizabeth’s arrival at Farm Cove attracted an estimated 1 million onlookers in a city with a population of 1,863,161.

The royals visited 57 towns and cities over 58 days, travelling from Cairns in the north, Broken Hill in the west to Hobart in the south.

“But I love this,” said Riley. “In Wagga, where the population was 8000, 18,000 people [travelled there] to see her.”

Among the extraordinary festivities, some prisoners were given reduced sentences.

The royals travelled with 10 members of the royal household. Many were aristocrats who were related. Many are familiar names to watchers of The Crown including Sir Michael Adeane (the Queen’s private secretary, played by Will Keen in early episodes), who was descended from Sir Arthur Bigge (Lord Stamfordham) who worked for George V.

Members of the royal household for the 1954 royal visit to AustraliaCredit: Trove

The travelling household also included Viscount Althorp, who became Earl Spencer and father of Diana.

Vickers said too many people took The Crown seriously.

He urged this masthead not to “attach too much importance to the ghastly, dishonest and republican-oriented Crown. I am sure people prefer the genuine article; otherwise it is all pointless.”

The map of the Queen’s visit to NSW in 1954. It is estimated that 75 per cent of Australians saw her during the visit. Credit: Trove.

Riley says that, while The Crown’s actors did an incredible job, the royal family still holds a space in “an incredible world full of competing celebrities”.

University of Sydney lecturer in film studies Bruce Isaacs said the public had always been interested in royalty because it represented the powerful, the elite, and the chosen. But the current royal family had become “a kind of culture industry in itself”.

Historian Cindy McCreery, who studies colonialism and the monarchy, said The Crown had a huge impact, fusing celebrity and the royals.

It was the royals, though, who encouraged this. They were early adaptors of commercial photography to promote themselves in the 19th century.

“I don’t think it is the royals who have been left behind or left out. The more interesting issue is that they’ve colluded, and deliberately chosen to work with filmmakers.”

Dominic West as Prince Charles and Olivia Williams as Camilla in The Crown.Credit: Netflix

That included participating in the 1969 documentary of their lives.

“It is the royals who have sought to embed themselves in media. It is not just that they have been replaced by actors. But in terms of this visit, it is a 75-year-old man managing cancer. It is a very different thing to a young glamorous Queen arriving in 1954.”

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.