Prince Philip at 95
To celebrate the Duke of Edinburgh’s 95th birthday, Juliet Rieden explores the royal’s special connection with Australia.
INCREDIBLY, THE DUKE of Edinburgh has visited Australia more times than any other member of the royal family. During the war, he spent time in Sydney, Melbourne, Western Australia and Tasmania as a naval of cer, and after the 1954 tour with the Queen, he made 16 solo trips in addition to those with his wife.
What is even more surprising is that Prince Philip frequently ew himself halfway around the world and back. Those close to the Duke tell how he would pilot the plane himself and make the journey to Australia with a co-pilot in a number of hops, with stopovers in places like Malta, Oman, India, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand and Malaysia en route.
The Duke learned to y with the Royal Air Force (RAF), earning his wings in 1953 and his helicopter wings with the Royal Navy in 1956, but it was using his private pilot’s licence, gained in 1959, that he would jump, usually into the royal jet – an Andover, part of the eet known as the Queen’s Flight – to y down-under. Prince
Philip was 76 when he gave up ying in August 1997, having notched up 5986 ying hours in 59 different aircraft (including a Concorde) over 44 years.
LIEUTENANT PHILIP Mountbatten was 19 years old when he rst visited Australia. It was 1940, and as a junior of cer with HMS Ramillies he was most sought after by Sydney’s society set. His dashing good looks and lean, t stature were much talked of, and reports say he was “a most agreeable companion, intelligent, witty and with both feet on the ground”.
When not on the dance oor, Mountbatten loved riding and shooting, and even took up sur ng, which he proved rather good at. As the
Prince of Greece and Denmark – titles he renounced when he became a British subject in 1947 in anticipation of his marriage to Princess Elizabeth – second cousin of King George VI and greatgreat-grandson of Queen Victoria, Philip Mountbatten was extremely well connected and never short of an invite to stay on a sheep or cattle station; on a later trip, he even managed to score a week at Admiralty House in Sydney, as a guest of the Governor-General.
He returned in 1945 with HMS Whelp, sporting a golden beard, which was the vision that a young Princess Elizabeth reportedly kept in a frame on her dressing table.
In Tasmania, he stayed on the Connorville Estate in Cressy, home to Australia’s finest merino sheep and a great place for the naval officer to unwind. He was the guest of Mrs
R.G. O’Connor, who said, “He was a natural, unspoiled boy and one could not have met anyone nicer. He had a jolly, infectious laugh, and was very good company … In every way he was typically an Englishman.”
In 1942, as a sublieutenant with the destroyer HMS Wallace, Prince Philip met an Australian who was to become a lifelong friend and touchstone. Mike Parker, a fellow naval officer who later became the Duke of Edinburgh’s Private Secretary and Equerry, was a straight-talking Aussie with a wicked sense of fun. In Australia in 1945, Parker and Mountbatten found themselves on leave together and hit the social scene. “Philip was actually quite reserved. He didn’t give away a lot. There have been books and articles galore saying he played the field. I don’t believe it,” Parker tells Gyles Brandreth in his book Philip And Elizabeth: Portrait Of A Marriage.
“In Australia, Philip came to meet my family, my sisters and their friends. There were girls galore, but there was no one special. Believe me. I guarantee it,” he says.
It was actually Parker who delivered the terrible news to his friend, now Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Princess Elizabeth, that her father the King had died. The couple were on tour in Africa, staying the night at Treetops, a safari lodge perched high up in a leafy canopy in a Kenyan game park. The Duke was asleep when
“There were girls galore, but there was no one special. Believe me.”
Parker roused him to break the news that King George VI was dead, aged
56, and his daughter, Prince Philip’s wife, was now Queen. “I never felt so sorry for anyone in all my life,” said Parker. “He looked as if you’d dropped half the world on him.”
From this moment on, Prince Philip’s life changed forever. His naval career was over and his work would be dedicated to supporting his wife, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. For an active military man, it must have been quite a challenge. “I think it was very hard for him to put his career on hold,” says Sir William Heseltine, an Aussie who worked with the Duke, in later years, in his role as Press and Private Secretary to Her Majesty.
But within this new world order, the Prince carved out special interests of his own – and Australia featured high on his agenda. Following the 1954 visit, Prince Philip returned here two years later as part of his four-month world tour on
Royal Yacht Britannia.
He spent 27 days opening the Olympic Games in Melbourne and also visiting the Northern Territory, the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales and Victoria. Arriving in Darwin, he immediately impressed his hosts with his keen interest in local projects such as the uranium mines in Rum Jungle – a drive of 105km through unending bush. Later, on a crocodile hunt, he shot a1.8-metre croc, and on an outback cattle station proved himself a natural at mustering cattle in punishing heat. Undeterred by the temperatures and the distances, he went to Tennant Creek, Alice Springs and then Hamilton Downs Station for an informal Aussie barbecue before jumping on a plane to dine with Prime Minister Robert Menzies in Canberra. Prince Philip was uniquely suited to Aussie country life. He loved the bush, was a superb horseman, cooked outdoors, and his blunt sense of humour fitted right in with larrikin farmers. When the Queen Mother visited in 1958, she too spent her best days on a cattle station. In her letter home to Princess Margaret, she eulogised about the Aussie station hands and in many ways could have been describing her dashing son-in-law: “The real country Australian is really a knock out. Very tall, with long legs encased in tight trousers ... too charming for words”.
After 1954, when three-quarters of the adult population turned out to see the Queen, it would be a test of the Duke’s popularity to see how many would come to see him solo. But in Melbourne, the Opening Ceremony for the Olympic Games saw 103,000 people line the streets to cheer the Duke. In advance, rigorous checks were made by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation for communist activity. None was found, but teams from communist countries marched past the royal box without saluting. The Prince was unperturbed.
In 1961, the Duke rather bizarrely intervened to save the noisy-scrub bird near Albany in WA. The bird – which does, by the way, have a very noisy call and is now, though still endangered, increasing in numbers in Two Peoples Bay, south of Perth – is the subject of two of the paintings in the Duke’s private collection of Australian art. The collection began in 1956, when the Duke purchased 16 Aboriginal paintings by artists including Albert and Oscar Namatjira. Then in 1963, the Queen bought Sidney Nolan’s
Herd At The Waterhole for Prince Philip’s birthday.
In 2013, Albert Namatjira’s grandchildren presented their own paintings to the Queen and Prince Philip to add to the Royal Collection.
“I think it was very hard for him to put his career on hold.”
Of course, the Prince’s most infamous encounter with indigenous Australia came in 2002 in Cairns, when he asked Ivan Brim, who was in body paint and loincloth, “Do you still throw spears at each other?” Such gaffes have become part of the royal’s make-up, and while his critics suggest they hide an underlying elitism, the veteran royal watchers are used to what they see as the offbeat humour of a man who has never been anything but himself in public life. “Prince Philip is very natural – he says what he wants and does what he wants,” says Press Association’s Alan Jones, who admires the Duke’s authenticity.
Sir William Heseltine is inclined to agree. “Poor Prince Philip always got criticised for harmless remarks and witticisms which he was making to try and enliven proceedings,” he explains.
“When you think how many thousands of situations he’s been in and been trying to raise a laugh, and half a dozen times in his life he’s said something just a little bit injudicious and everybody leaps on him.”
Former Governor-General Dame Quentin Bryce enjoyed hosting the royal couple at Yarralumla in Canberra and notes the Duke’s amusing irreverence. On one stay, Her Excellency was showing the Duke personal mementos. “A photograph of Ilfracombe where I spent my early years. I explained every detail of the town, who lived where, the dam my father and Bill Forrest built. He listened intently, then he opined, ‘If you ask me, it looks ready for development!’”
Prince Philip’s last visit to Australia was with the Queen in 2011 for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). Tony Abbott’s controversial knighthood of the royal in 2015 nearly brought down the government and was a factor in Abbott’s own demise. And yet the monarchy still thrives.
In 1967, in one of his typically no-nonsense statements, Prince Philip advised Australians, “If the monarchy is of value, retain it … if not, get rid of it.” As he celebrates his 95th birthday on June 10, the Prince can rest assured he is unlikely to ever see that day.
This is an edited extract from The Royals
In Australia by Juliet Rieden, published by Pan Macmillan.