The Princess Royal – who has long been known as the hardest working member of the royal family – is set to embark on a major overseas engagement in the coming weeks
Princess Anne is set to embark on a major multi-day overseas engagement next month, as the Princess Royal and her husband, Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, will travel to Australia.
Buckingham Palace announced that Anne will undertake engagements in the Australian states of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, as she will head Down Under on November 8, before heading to Singapore on November 11. Princess Anne – who has long been known as the hardest working member of the royal family – will be visiting Australia in her role as Colonel-in-Chief to the Royal Australian Corps of Signals (RA Sigs), with the visit marking 100 years since the formation of the Corps.
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The Palace said in a statement: “The Princess will undertake a series of military engagements in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane during the four-day visit to commemorate the centenary. As President of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Her Royal Highness will lay a wreath at the Sydney War Cemetery.”
After her many trips to Australia, Anne has long maintained a distinguished and enduring association with the Royal Australian Corps of Signals, serving as its Colonel-in-Chief since 1977.
The Royal Australian Corps of Signals is a team of soldiers who are technical specialists that provide communications, electronic warfare and cyber capabilities to support military operations.
pAnne has travelled to Australia more than 20 times, last travelling to the Commonwealth nation in 2022, with her three-day trip coinciding the anniversary of her father, Prince Philip ’s death. She officially opened the Sydney Royal Easter Show, celebrating the bicentenary of the Royal Agricultural Society of the Commonwealth in her role as patron.
After arriving by horse-drawn carriage, Anne made a speech at the official opening ceremony – her first on Australian soil – thanking the farming community for coming together despite countless hardships.
“I’ve seen how the past two years have been really difficult for the agricultural shows,” she said. “Agricultural shows provide the opportunity for city children to learn about country life.” Anne also made special mention of “the devastation of floods, following the impacts of the global pandemic and the harshness of the most recent drought and bushfires” that devastated New South Wales in 2022.
Australia also holds a sentimental place for her husband Sir Tim, who was posted to the frigate HMS Alacrity and attended the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) Tactics Course (RANTACCS) at HMAS Watson, Sydney in March 1986 where he was told that he had been made Equerry to the Queen and was promoted to commander two years later.
After the four-day trip to Australia, Princess Anne will travel to Singapore for two days of engagements to mark 60 years of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Singapore.
The announcement of Princess Anne’s journey to Australia comes just weeks after the nation’s prime minister Anthony Albanese extended an invitation for Prince William and Princess Kate to take a tour Down Under.
After meeting with King Charles in Balmoral in late September, Albanese said there was a “standing invitation” for Kate and William to visit the country in the “coming period”, and is “hopeful” they will take him up on the offer.
King Charles and Queen Camilla visited Australia last October, with their whirlwind nine-day tour, where Charles addressed Parliament in Canberra just moments before he was confronted with a furious anti-monarch senator in a defiant protest.
