After a day trip to Canberra on Monday, King Charles and Queen Camilla were back in Sydney, Australia today for even more public events. They play-acted their way through a barbeque at Parramatta Park, they met with some First Nations leaders, they greeted people at Sydney Opera House, they looked at sheep. There were protesters in Sydney, but the police managed to block them out from all of Charles’s events. The Guardian noted that the protesters chanted “You’re on stolen land” and “No pride in genocide.” This also happened:
Later, around 10,000 people lined the streets and packed into the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House. Charles and Camilla watched primary school children perform a gleeful synchronised dance, joined a boat at Sydney’s Man O’War Steps and attended a Royal Australian Navy fleet review on Sydney Harbour.
The event largely went ahead without incident, aside from the arrest of Aboriginal man Wayne “Coco” Wharton, who was protesting the royal visit and attempting to serve a notice for the king’s arrest.
“You have no receipt, you have no agreement on the occupation of this country,” he shouted to the crowd. “You are a nation of thieves. You’re guilty.”
The palace is still edgy from Senator Lidia Thorpe’s protest in Parliament yesterday, so everyone is doing the most to say that Charles and Cam turned the page after Canberra, and that their final day in Sydney was a huge success. I’ve seen some fact-checking on social media, basically Aussies pointing out how stage-managed these royal events were, and how there really wasn’t a huge show of support for the British monarch. Before this tour, there was talk of how the palace was hoping that Australians’ ambivalence to the crown would win the day, but it actually feels like… the few Aussies who came out are there because they’re watching the car-crash farewell tour.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.