Key points
- King Charles is on a nine-day visit to Australia and Samoa, his first major foreign tour since he was crowned.
- His first official public appearance was a Sunday morning service at St. Thomas’ Anglican Church in Sydney.
- Protesters also gathered outside the church, holding banners reading “Empire Built on Genocide” and “Decolonise”.
King Charles’s Antipodean admirers got their first glimpse of their reigning monarch as the British royal family attended a church service and expressed “great joy” at his return to Australia.
The 75-year-old sovereign arrived in Sydney late on Friday evening but kept a low profile with royal duties.
His first official public appearance was a Sunday morning service at St. Thomas’ Anglican Church, a stone building built as a place of worship for British colonial settlers.
A few hundred people gathered around the building, cheering, holding flowers and waving flags. Two women held up a sign that read “G’day Your Majesties.”
King Charles III and Queen Camilla will visit Australia from October 18 to October 23. Source: MONKEY / Dean Levins
Lynton Martin, 22, drove nine hours from Melbourne and donned a union flag jacket and nine royal lapel pins before trying to catch a glimpse of the royals.
“I wanted to show that we support and welcome the king,” he told Agence France-Presse, expecting an “aura” for Sunday’s service.
Last year Martin traveled to London for Charles’ coronation, which he described as a ‘spectacular’ event.
During the church service, Bishop Christopher Edwards prayed for peace and an end to wars, asking that Charles’ upcoming Commonwealth summit in Samoa would go smoothly.
Protesters also gathered outside the church, holding banners reading “Empire Built on Genocide” and “Decolonise”, as well as Aboriginal and Lebanese flags.
Peaceful protesters gathered outside the church service in Sydney. Source: MONKEY / Dean Levins
Later on Sunday, Charles made a brief remark at the New South Wales Legislative Council, where he praised the “promise and power of representative democracy” and joked about his advancing age.
“I first came to Australia almost 60 years ago, which is a bit worrying,” he said with a laugh.
“It remains for me to say what a great joy it is to come to Australia for the first time as sovereign and to renew the love for this country and its people which I have so long cherished.”
Charles will spend the rest of Sunday at Admiralty House, a harborside mansion that is the residence of the Governor General of Australia, the monarch’s representative in the country.
Royal watchers eager to catch a glimpse of the king will get another chance on Monday when he arrives in the capital Canberra with Queen Camilla for the busiest part of his reduced schedule.
Karel — – embarks on a nine-day visit to Australia and Samoa, his first major foreign tour since he was crowned.
Visiting British royals have typically made weeks-long visits to drum up support, parading through streets packed with excited, flag-waving subjects.
But due to the king’s fragile health, much of the typical grandeur has been scaled back this time.
Intentional or not, the more modest schedule should also help stave off Republican concerns about excessive spending and lavish royal banquets.
Apart from a community barbecue in Sydney and an event at the city’s famous opera house, there will be few mass public gatherings.
Australians, are nowhere near the enthusiastic loyalists they were in 2011 when thousands of people gathered to catch a white-glove wave from Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
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