Royal agenda Down Under: try ‘welly wanging’
Harry and Meghan’s tour to the Pacific will take in koalas, Invictus Games and hurling Wellington boots
THE Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s first overseas tour together will take the monarchy to new heights.
Their 16-day tour of Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand later this month will see the Duke climb Sydney Harbour Bridge with the Australian prime minister. A royal source said it would be “a different kind of visit” to the solo tours the Duke was used to when he was a bachelor.
During a busy first overseas tour to the Pacific region, the couple will take part in 76 engagements and meet mental health campaigners, as well as get involved in sporting activities as part of the This Girl Can campaign.
The trip also coincides with the Duke’s Invictus Games in Sydney. A day before the Paralympics-style championship for injured or sick servicemen and women begins, he will raise the Invictus flag at the top of Sydney Harbour Bridge with Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister.
The couple will also go to Taronga Zoo in the city, where they will see two koalas and their joeys that are part of the zoo’s breeding programme.
A royal source said: “It’s the Duchess’s first tour and it’s all quite new and daunting in terms of what she wants to do. New Zealand has hosted many, many royal visits and they offered up a number of engagements and the Duchess thought it was all very good.”
The couple will leave Australia for Fiji, where they will unveil a new statue commemorating Sergeant Talaiasi Labalaba, a British-fijian soldier who lost his life in the 1972 Battle of Mirbat.
The Duke will also lay a wreath at the Fiji War Memorial and meet a number of Fijian war veterans, some of whom served with the British Armed Forces.
Today, there are more than 1,250 Fijians still serving in the Army.
The Duke and Duchess will then fly to Tonga, where they will visit Tupou College, the oldest secondary school in the Pacific, founded by a British missionary in 1866.
They will return to Sydney for the final day of the Invictus Games, where they will spend the afternoon at the wheelchair basketball finals, before attending the closing ceremony that evening at Qudos Bank Arena.
The couple will then travel to New Zealand and will be greeted by a haka performed by members of the country’s Defence Force at a welcome ceremony in Wellington.
Before heading to Auckland, where they will pay a visit to North Shore to dedicate a 20-hectare (50-acre) area of native bush to the Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy.
After unveiling the commemorative plaque, the couple will join children from the Trees For Survival group in a “welly wanging” contest. The unusual sport, in which competitors are required to throw a Wellington boot as far as possible, is believed to have originated in England in the Seventies.
Before returning to the UK, the Duke and Duchess will attend a kiwi breeding programme in Rainbow Springs, where they will have the chance to name two young chicks that have recently hatched.
The details of the tour come a day after Tom Tugendhat, a Conservative MP, said Prince Harry should be made the UK’S ambassador to America to “cut through” US politics.