Harry and Meghan Australia Tour 2026: How Prince Harry and Meghan’s tour of Australia is showing what the royal family is missing

By Victoria Ward

There was talk of Tim Tams and koalas, big crowds, flowers and selfies.

I watched as the Duchess of Sussex It hugged sick children, declared a hospital garden “serene” and was laden with handmade drawings and knitted flowers.

Prince HarryMeanwhile, he worried about a clay model of a ‘wingless kookaburra’ and joked that he might have trouble getting the sweet-smelling bark of a gum tree home through customs.

In another life, this could have been their second official royal tour Down Under.

Instead, here they are, described as ‘B-grade reality TV stars’ looking to use their royal titles to make a quick buck.

It was fascinating to see the polarizing couple in action as they embarked on what has proven – for many – to be a hugely controversial four-day tour of Australia.

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The Duke and Duchess increasingly find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Now that they have left Britain to seek financial independence, and with no more money flowing from the King’s finances, they must find a way to pay the mortgage and the notoriously high private security bills.

But when they try to combine business deals with charity work that resembles the royal duties they were so eager to leave behind, the public pushes back.

Their tour of Australia was preceded by a series of negative opinion pieces and editorials in the local press, describing the couple as “con artists” who used the country “like an ATM”.

Television presenters on the breakfast shows repeatedly asked whether anyone was actually interested in the visit, while politicians railed against the police resources put into the taxpayer-funded visit.

On the ground, as is often the case with royal jobs, it was a remarkably different story.

The couple arrived at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne to as large a crowd as I have ever seen at such an engagement.

The young patients, staff and families clamored for a glimpse of the VIP visitors as they shook hands, hugged and waved through the halls over the course of 45 minutes.

When a nurse handed Prince Harry some toy meerkats to take home for their children, he joked: “Gifts for the kids, tick the box.”

For a moment I thought he was just ticking off a predictable element of a royal engagement. In fact (I think) he was just checking something off his own to-do list.

The women the Duchess later met at a retreat were delighted to see her, as were the veterans they spent time with afterwards.

The Duke was in his element: relaxed and charming. This is obviously the task for which he was raised.

The Duchess is pretty good at it too, although she may be more aware of the cameras and eyes following her every move.

Was she sending a message with her choice of clothing: Karen Gee’s Priscilla dress, designed to ’empower’ and defined as ‘an exercise in refined strength’?

When Prince Harry rushed away from his group at the Australian National Veterans Art Museum to touch a work of art, she gave him a look likely not unfamiliar to Archie and Lilibet.

On the other hand, he is still her guiding hand. When the Duchess was given a book of poetry, she politely looked at it and put it down, only for Prince Harry to gently tell her to ‘keep it’.

What does Buckingham Palace think of such high-profile royal excesses? There will undoubtedly be a bit of snickering and eye-rolling, but you can be sure they’ll be watching closely nonetheless.

Could the Duke and Duchess have been an asset to the royal family? Undoubtedly yes, as this tour seems to indicate so far. It’s a shame that they wasted so much goodwill by destroying them so destructively.

It was impossible to tell whether the crowd gathered on the street in front of the veterans museum might have been there to boo and shout or shout for selfies.

When the doors opened and the couple came back out onto the sidewalk, there was only more cheering.

Rather than asking a question about the cost to taxpayers, a local reporter simply wanted to know what message the Duke might have for veterans.

So far so good. The reception on day one could not have been more positive.

Does this reflect the national mood? Only time will tell.

© Telegraph Media Group Limited 2026