Pregnant Meghan the star as Pacific royal tour ends
Royal couple name newly hatched kiwi chicks on final day of Pacific tour
ROTORUA: Prince Harry and pregnant wife Meghan visited the New Zealand resort town of Rotorua on Wednesday to wrap up a lengthy Pacific tour which has confirmed the star appeal of Britain’s newest royal.
Meghan, displaying what Harry affectionately refers to as “our little bump,” has drawn adoring crowds in Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand on her irst international tour since the couple married in May.
The American-born former actor and her husband attended 76 engagements over 16 days in the former British colonies, with Meghan sometimes changing designer outits four times in a single day.
While they observed the inevitable formalities with prime ministers and other dignitaries, members of the public who met the touring royals said they came across as down-to-earth and personable.
Meghan did not stand on ceremony, happily participating in a “welly-wanging” (gumboot throwing) competition, halting their royal entourage several times to give shy toddlers a cuddle and bringing her home-made banana bread to afternoon tea in outback Dubbo.
“They were very nice, chatty and relaxed,” was a typical assessment, offered by teenager Milan Chapman after she met them in New Zealand’s South Island.
On Wednesday Harry and his wife bestowed names to two newly-hatched young of New Zealand’s national bird, the kiwi, in the northeastern town of Rotorua, on the inal day of their twoweek tour of the Pacific.
The couple visited a breeding programme for the endangered species and admired two three-day old chicks, whom they named Koha, meaning “gift”, and Tihei, derived from a phrase that means “sneeze of life” in the indigenous Te Reo Maori language.
Earlier, Harry led a group at a Maori meeting ground in singing “Te Aroha,” a traditional song, whose name means “Love” in Te Reo.
The couple were welcomed at Te Papaiouru Marae, visited by Harry’s grandmother Queen Elizabeth in her coronation year of 1953, in Rotorua, a town famed for its geothermal activity and described by its mayor as the ‘heartland of Maori culture’.
Meghan, who wore a navy Stella Mccartney dress and a carved greenstone necklace gifted by the country’s governor general and Harry, in a grey suit, were both adorned with feathered cloaks gifted by local Maori.