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Republican sentiments may be simmering, but this was the week that Australia fell in love with Prince Harry and Meghan.
It certainly helped that hours after touching down in Sydney, Kensington Palace announced that the Duchess of Sussex was pregnant, as if they had been saving it up as a gift for the Australian public. (Or at the very least a present to newspaper editors, who responded with gusto – “Heir Dinkum!” wrote Murdoch’s Sydney newspaper the Daily Telegraph.)
But even without the well-timed baby news, the duke and duchess appear to have made all the right moves during their week in Australia, kicking off a 16-day tour that also takes in New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga.
They have shaken hands, hugged babies, and spent so long chatting to the public that they have put their own schedules out. Harry has been cracking jokes about drop bears with zookeepers, while Meghan has twinkled and beamed in response to congratulations on her pregnancy.
When the couple arrived in the regional city of Dubbo on Wednesday, Harry even let a young boy hug him, then tug on his beard and pat his head, while Meghan brought allegedly homemade banana bread to the rural city to thank a local couple whose farm they visited. The duke and duchess have been the model examples of what to do when flying in to a country that your family rules – or at least, for the time being anyway.
A poll earlier this year found 52% of the country supports Australia becoming a republic, with only 22% against. 67% of people in that survey also said their views on Australia’s future as a republic or otherwise were unaffected by news of royal weddings or babies. Federal opposition leader Bill Shorten has promised that if elected next year, he will schedule another referendum within his first year in office.
Still, the crowds have loved it. It helps that Harry is not likely to ever sit on the throne and so there is not the same queasiness that is caused by a visit from either Charles or William; that sense of the landlady’s son coming to check on the place before they take over from mum.
The only thing that has seemed not to go as planned has been the weather, which has been alternately rainy, windy and humid. But even there, Harry and Meghan seem to have a magic touch, given the drought afflicting large swaths of the country. As they arrived in Dubbo – in the heart of New South Wales farming country – the heavens opened, and torrential rain washed out the scheduled picnic at Victoria Park.
In any other royal visit, rain like this would have been a blow, but coming in the middle of one of the worst droughts the state has ever faced, it became a cause for celebration. The duke and duchess seemed to have brought the rain with them – a gift better even than banana bread.
Their visit has bettered William and Kate’s successful trip in 2014, when Prince George, then a babe in arms, was dubbed “George the republican-slayer” on breakfast television. As for Prince Charles and Camilla’s visit earlier this year to open the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, that went by largely unheralded. At his public event in Brisbane, Charles attracted barely a tenth of the 45,000 people who showed up in the Queensland capital to see the Queen seven years earlier.
But Harry and Meghan were always the royals that were going to resonate most in Australia. Younger, fresher, less buttoned-up, and more willing to break with protocol, they have a more saleable – dare we say, more Australian – charm.
Kamil Karamali
(@KamilKaramali)Prince Harry made the day for a fan in Australia, making her cry from excitement. #RoyalTourAustralia #royalvisitAUS pic.twitter.com/WrmdddU0XU
It is difficult to imagine Kate kicking off her designer wedges to walk barefoot on Bondi beach, as Meghan did on Friday. Indeed, when the Duchess of Cambridge visited Manly beach in Sydney in 2014, it was with wedges decidedly on. And William would not have looked as comfortable as Harry did surrounded by surfers wearing gold leggings, flower crowns, neon bikinis and face paint.
Every time they have broken the rules on this visit – Harry hugging a teenage girl in Melbourne who immediately burst into tears, later saying she was so surprised because she knew hugs were not in the royal handbook – has been met with rapturous commentary on Australian television. Even Harry’s boozy past endears him to a nation that prides itself on being “larrikins” – good-natured, piss-taking, rule-breakers.
It also helps that Harry’s reason for being here – opening the Invictus Games, in which ill and wounded servicepeople compete in a range of sports – is undoubtedly praiseworthy, making the trip more than just a PR exercise.
But make no mistake, this trip is also such an exercise, and it has been an incredibly successful one at that.
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