Right at the front is eight-year-old Ashley Crighton all dressed up in her finest pink party dress carrying a bouquet of pink tulips to present to the Duchess.
“I want to see the princess and baby George” Ashley tells me.
She may not meet Prince George who isn’t scheduled to be accompanying his parents today, but I suspect she’s highly likely to meet Kate.
Her neighbour 11-year-old Ainsley Mann is a dab hand at meeting royalty. She was hugged by Crown Princess Mary when she visited in October very shortly after the worst of the bush fires that devastated this area in NSW’s Blue Mountains hit.
“We put together a poster which showed a photo of Ainslee looking out of our window at home on the burnt house next door and a picture of Princess Mary’s window at her palace in Copenhagen,” Ainslee’s mum Debbie tells me.
“We had visited and looked though her side window to see baby buggies and thought that was really cute. It was a tale of two windows. Princess Mary hugged Ainslee and took the picture with her.”
“It was amazing” adds a beaming Ainslee.
Today’s visit is huge for the community. “It’s important for the world to see firstly how beautiful the Blue Mountains are and then what a great resilient community we have here,” says Debbie.
Lara Roots was in her house when the fires struck last year. “We lost our roof and the fire came right up to the back of the house … I honestly thought I was going to die. It was a stranger who helped me, a guy I’d never met before.”
