Sick children have enjoyed up close and personal interactions with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex during the first stop of the couple’s Australian tour.
Hundreds of excited families and youngsters clamoured inside the foyer at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital on Tuesday morning as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle made a much-anticipated appearance.
The pair shook hands with dozens of well-wishers and took time to speak and take pictures with young patients and their parents, offering hugs and waves to others.
It was an exciting morning for four-year-old oncology patient Lily, who spoke with and got a selfie taken with both royals.
“They said ‘nice to meet you Lily’, and I just gave Meghan some flowers,” she told AAP.
“They were friendly and they were very, very nice to me.”
Eight-year-old Enuara Latifi had spent almost three months at the Royal Children’s undergoing treatment for spinal muscular atrophy and was set to go home on Tuesday when the royals visited.
“Meghan said, ‘are you sure you want to give me the flowers?’ I said ‘yeah’,” Enuara recalled.
“Meghan said thank you.”
Adnan Latifi said it was a big surprise for his daughter to meet the royals.
“She’s always been like a princess, so to meet another princess, it’s a blessing,” he said.
“It’s a joy to see her smiling and to see what it feels like being a princess.”
Health workers gathered in their offices above to watch as the couple walked past.
When asked by a journalist what he was most looking forward to about being Down Under, the prince replied “everything”.
“It’s been great, nice to be back,” he said.
The hospital was first visited by Queen Elizabeth II in 1963 and by Princess Diana and the then-prince Charles in 1985.
The duke and duchess followed up their hospital visit with a tour of a centre delivering support to women and children experiencing family violence and homelessness.
Meghan donned an apron and served frittata to people at the centre, run by McAuley Community Services for Women.
After serving several people, the duchess asked “is anyone else hungry?”, while looking and smiling at the press and other people gathered in the centre.
Meghan then sat down at a table and joined people eating food, telling them: “We landed here this morning so my jet lag hasn’t quite hit yet.”
Other planned appearances are decidedly more commercial – and controversial.
Organisers of a three-day women’s retreat say Meghan will headline the exclusive event – pitched as a “girls weekend like no other” – while Harry is set to deliver a keynote speech on workplace mental health at a Melbourne summit.
Tickets to the retreat start at $2699, while in-person attendance at the summit will set punters back about $1000 or more.
The privately funded trip is not an official royal tour, with the couple no longer working members of the royal family after renouncing their status and moving to the US in 2020.
For Giselle Bastin, a Flinders University associate professor and expert on the British royal family, the decision to use their titles to pursue private interests will be perceived by many as a conflict of interest.
“Staging of a quasi-royal tour to Australia is being regarded as a rather desperate attempt to monetise their status as royalty,” she told AAP.
During their headline-grabbing trip almost a decade earlier, adoring crowds clamoured to catch a glimpse of the newlyweds and much of the nation gushed as news of Meghan’s pregnancy was announced.
“By contrast in 2026, the Sussexes have ceased to be working royals and have used media platforms to air their grievances about the royal family,” Prof Bastin said.
Adding to the shift in public sentiment has been police confirmation taxpayers will cover additional security costs and public safety operations, contradicting repeated assurances from the couple’s team that the visit would be entirely privately funded.
An online petition calling for Australian taxpayers not to foot the bill has attracted more than 45,000 signatures.
With PA
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source aapnews.aap.com.au ’
