King Charles & Camilla plan to visit Australia & New Zealand next October

When QEII passed away, King Charles rushed to announce his plans to travel the world on a big commonwealth tour. There were palace-approved stories about how Charles wanted to do a two-year travel blitz and do big, setpiece tours of Australia and New Zealand especially. In the first fifteen months as king, Charles has only visited Germany, France and Kenya in an official capacity. That’s it. Meanwhile, his heir has only been to Boston (a flop) and Singapore (another flop). Kate apparently doesn’t even want to travel anymore, and neither does Queen Camilla. Well, big news, Charles and Camilla will definitely go to Australia next year.

King Charles is planning to visit Australia next year in what is likely be a key test of his popularity as monarch, the Sydney Morning Herald has reported. The King, accompanied by Queen Camilla, is expected to travel to Australia just before or after the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa, which is being held in late October.

“King Charles is planning to visit Australia and New Zealand in October,” the newspaper reported, quoting an anonymous diplomatic source, who had contact with the monarch.

A source within Australia’s Labor Government, who also asked not to be named, said the visit had not been formally confirmed by Buckingham Palace, but added: “It’s very possible it will happen. It would be around the time of CHOGM that he would come, either before or after, that would make sense,” the source added.

Conveniently, Canberra’s parliamentary schedule for next year has a week-long break on both sides of the CHOGM conference, which would allow a royal visit to Australia without interrupting the parliamentary sitting calendar.

It would be the royal couple’s first visit to Australia since 2018 when they opened the Commonwealth Games on the Queensland Gold Coast.

Public reaction to a royal visit next year might indicate the level of republican sentiment in Australia, coming more than two years after Queen Elizabeth’s death. The most recent opinion poll, held just after Her Majesty’s death, suggested 46 per cent of Australians favoured a republic, while 54 per cent preferred the current system of government.

[From The Telegraph]

I’m going to keep bringing this up because no one else will: Charles was supposed to travel a lot more in his first year as king. He should have gone on at least one big Commonwealth tour in 2023, and in the fall of 2022, the palace promised to do just that. It’s weird that no one brings it up or asks why Commonwealth countries are getting the royal shaft. A promise to visit Australia and New Zealand more than two years after his accession is kind of insulting. Of course, pity poor Canada, the king and his heir absolutely refuse to even “promise” to visit Canada.

Hilariously, William had the perfect chance to visit Australia for a few days this summer – he could have and should have traveled to Oz in August when the Lionesses made it to the Women’s World Cup final. Instead, he flatly refused, because something something the environment or he couldn’t visit a country before his father. Even that nutjob Daniela Elser pointed out that William and Kate seem to (gulp) not want to have anything to do with Australia.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

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