After checking out the navy at Garden Island, The Duchess of Cornwall took off solo to a very special appointment at Sydney’s Victoria Barracks.
The latest addition to Camilla’s list of titles is Colonel-in-Chief of The Royal Australian Corps of Military Police and she’s here she to accept the appointment — will we see her on the international beat soon I wonder?
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The Royal Australian Corps of Military Police has been sent to every war and conflict in which Australia has participated since 1901 and continues to serve around the globe.
They’re currently over in Afghanistan where the Duchess’s stepson Prince Harry is serving so she has lots to talk about with Corps.
She arrives onto the green lawns of Victoria Barracks with a motorcycle escort and draws up in front of a rapt crowd of special invitees spontaneously clapping as she steps up to a lectern.
The Army Band strikes up ‘God Save The Queen’ and for a moment the reason for this visit, to celebrate Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee, 60 years of service, resonates around this place, home to an arm of her forces.
With a punishing Sydney sun blazing, the Duchess in a simple and elegant Anna Valentine cream dress bordered with white and teamed with a Lock of St James’s hat. She takes the Royal Salute and inspects the Royal Guard and the Australian Army Band.
As she walks along the double line up there are two very vigilant minders looking on from a distance — they are Kaiser and Cliff, Belgian Shepherd dogs and key members of the police security team.
In her second speech of the tour — her first was at the Osteoporosis function in Melbourne — The Duchess begins: “It gives me enormous pleasure to address you today as your new and very proud Colonel-in-Chief. This is a very exciting time for me not only because of the great honour you have done me but also because it is my first trip to Australia and I deeply regret having left it so late.”
She goes on to talk about the unique links between the Royal Family and the Australian Army and to this honour specifically.
“Her Majesty the Queen is Colonel-In-Chief of the Royal Military Police, with whom you have close professional ties and shared lineage. And so I was very keen to know who my predecessor was.
“I think you can imagine my delight and pride when I learned that in the prestigious 96-year history since your formation I have no predecessor and that I am, therefore and self-evidently, your first Colonel-in-Chief,” she beamed adding a trademark quip. “I am delighted to see that you are all wearing your rather dashing scarlet berets and wondered if the Colonel-in-Chief might possibly get to wear one, too?”
As with everything the Duchess has undertaken here in Australia so far, it was a flawless performance which highlighted her warmth and humour and the passion and sense of enjoyment she brings to her relatively new position within the royal firm.
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In the middle of it all one poor officer — an escort of the banner — right in the front row passes out from the heat.
“They’ve been rehearsing all week,” a spokesman for the Military Police tells me “and the adrenalin would be pumping and just got too much him.”
But after a quick visit to the medics he runs back on the field to resume his post in front of his new Colonel-in-Chief.
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