There were plans for the Prince William and Kate Middleton to tour Australia in 2020 to visit communities devastated by the catastrophic Black Summer bushfires – however, that proposal was derailed by the pandemic. As such, the couple’s last visit to the country was in 2014, when they toured New Zealand and Australia in April along with their son, George, who was a baby at the time. The Waleses’ younger children, Charlotte and Louis, have never visited Australia (so would no doubt be keen for a summer holiday there next year).
Kate, too, has let slip that she would be eager to revisit Australia with her family in tow. During the St Patrick’s Day parade in March, she told Corporal Adam Hamilton, an Australian reservist, that Prince George finds the country ‘fascinating’, adding: ‘I would like to go back there with [the children] now. It’s finding time to do that. But I love to travel.’
If William and Kate were to head to Australia, they would be following in the footsteps of King Charles and Queen Camilla, who conducted a highly successful tour of the country in October last year. It was a milestone moment: not only was it the King’s first visit as monarch to an overseas Commonwealth realm, but the first significant trip he had made since revealing his own cancer diagnosis earlier that year.
The King and Queen’s tour of Australia that took in Sydney and Canberra, immediately followed by a state visit to Samoa in the South Pacific where Charles attended the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. The week-long trip, according to a statement made at the time by the Palace, focused ‘on themes designed to celebrate the best of Australia and Samoa, as well as reflecting aspects of The King and Queen’s work’. Originally, this landmark royal tour was designed to last three weeks and take in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Samoa, but due to King Charles’ bout of ill health, the schedule was amended. Could we see William and Kate pick up the reins, to complete the fuller tour themselves next year? Watch this space…