Royal upset as world falls for Di
Princess Diana famously said she learned how to be royal ‘in one week’ ... she did it so well, her own husband was left in the shade
IN 35 degree heat, the crowd surged with excitement, well-wishers jostling to touch the new princess.
A hundred thousand people had packed outside Brisbane’s Town Hall and all of them wanted to see one person – Princess Diana.
She and Charles had gone on a walkabout, but were soon overcome by crowds pressing in on them, handing Diana flowers and garlands and one opportunist kissing Charles on the lips.
“Diana, Diana,” they chanted, many groaning when Prince Charles blocked their view of his beautiful wife.
The mania was unprecedented.
An incredible one million people turned out around Australia for Charles, Diana and nine-month old Prince William on their first overseas tour in 1983, all wanting to see for themselves this glamorous young woman and her apparent fairy-tale life.
Nobody in the Royal Family – not least 21-year-old Diana – had expected this reaction. Still new to her role, she was learning how to be a princess.
“I learned how to be royal in one week,” she later confessed. And while she smiled and waved to the cameras, she was in truth already unhappy in her marriage and struggling with bulimia.
“The whole world was focusing on me every day, I was in the front of the papers,” she said.
“I hadn’t done something specific like climb Everest. “Everybody always said when we were in the car, ‘Oh we’re in the wrong side, we want to see her, we don’t want to see him’,” she revealed, saying the public reaction added extra strain to her relationship with Charles.
By the end of the tour, Diana said she was a different person. “I realised the sense of duty, the level of intensity of interest, and the demanding role I now found myself in.”
Diana fever began from the moment she met Charles.
The shy young nursery school teacher in her sensible blouses – who was so unworldly she was snapped with her cotton skirt gone see-through in the sunshine – captured the imagination of the world.
There was nothing she or Charles could do to stop the juggernaut of adulation that would pursue her for the rest of her life.
Although she struggled in private on her first royal appointments, the public would never know, and as their appetite for Diana increased so did her confidence and a determination to do something with this popularity that had presented itself unbidden in her lap.
“There was something about Diana. People were absolutely fascinated by her,” said historian Jane Connors who wrote a book on Australian royal tours.
“There was the age difference and contrast between Charles’ inhibited behaviour and Diana’s happy giggling.
“There was also an irresistible sense of impending doom,” she said. “Feminists (including me) wore badges saying, ‘Don’t do it, Di!’”
When the young couple returned to Australia in 1985 and 1988, Diana was more relaxed.
In 1985, Charles spun her round the dance floor in Melbourne to the sound of Isn’t She Lovely, which she was, in her green Emanuel ball gown and emerald headband.
“It became a bit of a thing for young men in bow ties to present her with a rose and kiss her hand, and she blushed each and every time,” said Connors.
But it was not just what Diana wore that enchanted the crowds, it was what she said, and more importantly, how, she said it.
The Royal Family may not have given her the support or credit she longed for, but despite this Diana continued to be genuinely interested and compassionate to everyone she met.
Molly Meldrum, who worked with the princess on the 1985 tour took her for a look around his Egyptian-themed house in Richmond, where his startled assistant dropped the f-bomb at the sight of her.
“And then she said, ‘Do you want a bloody cup of tea or what?’” said Meldrum. “Diana thought it was funny.”
From hugging a seven-year-old AIDS patient in New York in 1989 to cradling abandoned children with AIDS in Brazil in 1991, Diana showed a tireless commitment to humanitarian causes and an incomparable ability to empathise with people from all corners of the globe.
“I don’t like the glamorous occasions,” she told biographer
There was the age difference and contrast between Charles’s inhibited behaviour and Diana’s happy giggling.
Andrew Morton.
“I would much rather be doing something with sick people — I’m more comfortable there.”
In fact, she would regularly attend hospitals and hospices in private, giving hope and comfort to terminally ill patients and their families. Many called her an “angel on earth” for sitting with them throughout their toughest hours.
It’s this commitment to charitable works that has been passed on to her sons, with both showing an innate ability to connect with people of all ages.
Diana’s last visit to Australia was in 1996, when post-divorce, she flew to Sydney to open the Victor Chang Institute, a remarkable coup organised by ex-nurse Marie Sutton.
“It has been eight years since I last had the pleasure of visiting this great continent, however it speaks great volumes for the people of Australia that despite the passage of time, you still both recognise and remember me,” she said with emotion.