Fill out this form to email this article to a friend
Charles' visit recalls school days
Associated Press
Published March 4, 2005
MELBOURNE, Australia - Britain's Prince Charles visited a school he attended almost 40 years ago, where memories of blisters, table hockey and a youthful sojourn in the Australian bush came flooding back.
The royal tour - his first to Australia in more than a decade - has sparked renewed debate here over whether the former British penal colony should withdraw from the Commonwealth and become a republic. Australians are now nominally subjects of the British crown and Queen Elizabeth II is Australia's head of state.
Charles spent about 30 minutes shaking hands and chatting with some of the hundreds of well-wishers at a farmers' market in the southern city of Melbourne.
When a woman told him she turned up just to see him, Charles quipped "it's a very rash thing to do."
Melbourne is the capital of Victoria state, which was the only one of Australia's eight states and territories that voted for replacing the constitutional monarchy with a republic during a referendum in 1999.
Charles also visited Geelong Grammar school, where he spent two terms mostly at the rural campus as a 15-year-old. He was attending the school's 150th anniversary celebration at its main campus, about 50 miles southwest of Melbourne.
Charles recalled a tough regime of working outdoors in sweltering temperatures, then enduring a cold winter at Timbertop, north of Melbourne.
"I remember having blisters on my hands and feet almost every day," said Charles, recalling the Australian bush.
"Despite the woodchopping and the 70-mile hikes with a blood-soaked shirt stuck on my back ... I loved it."
Charles was reunited with classmate Stuart McGregor, who was assigned in 1966 to help the young prince integrate into his new surroundings.
"He was a shy fellow looking for a new adventure," McGregor told reporters.
"I enjoyed the experience enormously and met a very decent man," he said.
On his last official trip before his April 8 wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles, Charles will also visit New Zealand and Fiji.
[Last modified March 4, 2005, 00:32:04]
Share your thoughts on this story
|
News
Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
Print
Email story
Comment
Email editor
