Friend of the Aussie family
CAROLINE Kennedy has arrived in Australia to take up her new role as US ambassador — and declared herself “so excited to be here”.
The sole surviving child of assassinated US president John F. Kennedy arrived in Sydney with her husband, author and artist Ed Schlossberg.
She said: “Personally, this means a great deal to me. My husband is here with me. We first came to Australia on our honeymoon 36 years ago, almost exactly.”
The phalanx of armed police and security staff surrounding the ambassador on Friday was no surprise given her family’s tragic history, also including the 1968 murder of her uncle, senator Robert Kennedy, five years after the death of her father.
Ms Kennedy, 64, revealed she and her husband had dreamt of coming back and did so with their three children in 2014, but wanted to learn even more about Australian history and its First Nations people.
Now she says she wants to introduce their grandchildren to this country, once she and her husband settle in to Canberra at the imposing US embassy compound overlooking Parliament House.
“We fell in love with the people we met and the places we went,” she said of her pre
vious brief visits. Now she is here for a couple of years.
There are many issues in her in-tray beyond just relations with long-term partner Australia, including the expansionism of China, regional security, the AUKUS pact and America’s renewed push into the Pacific.
Her return to Australia on Friday was emotional too, and partly in honour of her father JFK.
In early 1963, arrangements were being made for him to later that year be the first US president to visit Australia, for discussions with then prime minister Robert Menzies.
But the plans changed, as the 35th president decided he had to make a trip to Dallas, Texas, where in November that year he was assassinated.