BREATH OF FRESH AIR
How Philip invigorated stuffy monarchy
He was born in Greece, schooled in France, Germany and Scotland, trained in England and served in World War II naval theatres on the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
And, 10 times with his wife and less frequently solo, Prince Philip — who died on Friday aged 99 — crossed multiple oceans to reach a collection of islands so far from the seat of the British monarchy any kilometres further and he’d have found himself on his way back.
The first time, in the summer of 1953-1954, his wife Elizabeth was not only the newly crowned Queen but also a young mum of two.
Preparations, although tempered by the tragedy of Tangiwai — Prince Philip would lay a wreath at a mass funeral for victims of the Christmas Eve rail disaster — went far beyond digging out the bunting.
Sheep were dyed in the colours of the Union Jack, screens put up to block tired buildings and an army of kids in freshly sewn clothes were sent to parks, squares and train stations across the land.
Rotorua girl Miriama Searancke, 13, was among them, walking to Arawa Park alongside thousands of performers and spectators in her new red shoes with a Crown and the initials ER fixed to the side.
“Everybody came to perform for the Queen,” Searancke told the Daily Post in 2018.
“It was amazing.”
The 38-day tour took the couple to 46 towns or cities and 110 functions, with three-quarters of the country estimated to have spotted a royal wave.
As with all the couple’s official tours over more than seven decades of marriage, Prince Philip was usually in the background.
When Pat Jamieson joined the crowds calling “We want the Queen” outside Revington’s Hotel in Greymouth, she was convinced she actually got the couple onto the balcony after — in a quiet moment — calling out “I want the Duke”.
The 11-year-old had shared a moment with the consort earlier that day after running half a mile alongside their car during a street parade, she later told the NZHistory website.
“The Duke of Edinburgh looked across and said, ‘If you run much further, you will burst’.”
He was known for a long list of blunt — and often outrageous — remarks. One, made in a 1954 letter to Australian politician Sir Harold Hartley and unearthed last year, painted a different picture of the Duke of Edinburgh’s thoughts on New Zealand and its inhabitants than could be gleaned from a spontaneous wave or a laying of a wreath.
Māori were treated in New Zealand like “museum pieces and domestic pets”, he wrote, and the country was “the perfect welfare state” which was “over-governed with not much room for initiative”.
He was, however, impressed by a museum exhibition of Māori culture, a special interest after reading The Coming of the Māori by Sir Peter Buck/Te Rangi Hiroa (Ngāti Mutunga). And the people were “universally charming and on the whole most considerate”, he wrote.
He’d be back two years later — alone — popping in after the Melbourne Olympics.
A decade after their first successful New Zealand tour, the couple sailed into the Bay of Islands on the Royal Yacht Britannia on Waitangi Day 1963, visiting ports including Nelson, from which the Duke — whose flagship Duke of Edinburgh Award programme helped thousands of young people master life skills — visited the Outward Bound School at Anakiwa.
The Queen and Duke, along with Prince Charles and Princess Anne, were back seven years later for the James Cook bicentenary.
The royal couple would return for the Commonwealth Games in Christchurch four years later, three years after that to mark the Queen’s Silver Jubilee and, in 1981, a short visit followed a Commonwealth Heads of Government conference over the ditch.
The 1981 tour left the country with the memory of Ginette McDonald’s Lyn of Tawa addressing the royals at the Royal Variety Performance. McDonald, in character with her braless, blue jumpsuit and Kiwi accent, won over the Duke when she made a comment about the royals opening Tawa’s memorial paddling pool.
“The Queen didn’t laugh at anything,” McDonald later told the New Zealand Women’s Weekly.
“It was Prince Philip who engaged with me. We met them afterwards and he muttered things in my ear. He said he liked the sound of the ‘piddling’ pool.”
The next visit came in 1990, when New Zealand marked 150 years since the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Auckland hosted the Commonwealth Games, with the Queen, Duke and Prince Edward in attendance.
The last New Zealand visit was in 2002, with the only glitch relating to a Daimler, which had a flat battery.
As the royals waited on their Australia-bound aircraft, airport workers had the task of pushing the car out of the way.
It was Prince Philip who engaged with me. Ginette McDonald