Long to reign over Aus? Prince Charles and Australia go way back

Submitted by Paul Daley on Mon, 09/11/2015 - 11:40am

The Prince of Wales’s popularity in Australia has, like the monarchy as a whole, waxed and waned over the decades. Now he’s returning for a five-day tour and a meeting with a new prime minister who wants his country to be a republic

In 1901, when the future King George V visited the imperial outstation of Melbourne as the Duke of Cornwall to open the new federation’s first national parliament, an official diarist recorded the anticipation in the then Australian capital.

The diary, part of the National Library of Australia’s collection, is a bureaucratically sober document, leaden with prosaic detail. But the description of Melbourne getting out of bed to – and desperate for a glimpse of – royalty in May 1901 demonstrates a rare writerly flourish from diarist JJ Keenan.

While I am a republican there are much more immediate issues