With her puffed sleeves, golden sandals and nervous grimace, Georgina Box launched their majesties’ first working day in Australia with a deep, perfectly executed curtsy.
The four-year-old ballerina had rehearsed in her room for days, and kept working on it until showtime on Sunday. “The kids’ church leaders said they’d been waiting for 20 minutes, and she was practising for that 20 minutes,” said her mother, Laura.
Neither King Charles III, Queen Camilla, nor Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Kanishka Raffel could hold back a smile as the perky preschooler bobbed to them in the vestibule of St Thomas’ Church.
The little girl set the tone for the royal couple’s reception in Sydney, which was just like the weather that greeted them as they woke at their harbourside residence on Sunday morning: sunny, with an occasional chill in the air.
Australians might be ambivalent about the monarchy and the role it should play in the country’s future but after a hard year, many enjoyed the distraction of royal pomp in their backyard.
There were a few hundred people hoping to catch a glimpse of the monarch outside St Thomas’ Church after the service, and another few hundred outside NSW Parliament House, which the King visited alone to mark the bicentenary of the Legislative Council.
Each venue could have accommodated many more, but those who came were enthusiastic. There was Melburnian Lynton Martin, who wore a jacket covered in Union Jacks and a brooch reading “Long Live the King”.
There was Elizabeth Kenny, who went royal spotting on her birthday and was rewarded by a brief meeting that left her shaking. There were Magali Latchoumanin and her daughter, Sunny, 11, who travelled 15 hours from a French-speaking island near South Africa to be part of history.
A small group of protesters also gathered outside the church, identifying themselves as First Nations Resistance. They held up a banner saying “DECOLONISE”, and exchanged barbs with royal supporters.
