Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, will visit Sydney, Melbourne, Dubbo and Fraser Island followed by trips to Fiji and Tonga and then stops in Wellington, Auckland and Rotorua on their tour of the region next month.
Kensington Palace last night released details of the royal tour, which is built around the Invictus Games, the international sporting event for injured and ill veterans founded by Prince Harry, and being held this year in Sydney.
Their visit, part of a four-country tour of the Pacific – including Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga – will attract huge crowds keen to get a glimpse of the popular prince and his glamorous American wife, whose wedding in May attracted a TV audience of several billion people.
The royal couple will be in Sydney on October 16 for a day, and will then spend the 17th of October in Dubbo in rural New South Wales.
They will spend October 18 in Melbourne, before returning to Sydney for Invictus Games events from October 19-21. The Invictus Games opening ceremony will be held on the 20th.
On Monday, October 22, the royal couple will head to Fraser Island in Queensland, where they will see a completed Queen’s Canopy project, which aims to restore rainforest across the Commonwealth.
They will then head to Fiji and Tonga, before returning to Sydney late on October 26, and spending the 27th in Australia, where they will attend the Invictus Games closing ceremony in Sydney.
Prince Harry is a Commonwealth youth ambassador, and the couple will likely visit community groups involved with young people, focusing on employment, training and community leadership. They are also likely to give a boost to campaigns helping farmers struggling with the drought, and look at wildlife conservation projects.
Meghan Markle and her husband’s New Zealand stops include Wellington on October 28-29 (including a visit to Abel Tasman), Auckland on October 30 and finally Rotorua on October 31.
The 16-day tour is the couple’s first major overseas tour and will give the Pacific region a huge profile internationally, with hundreds of British photographers and journalists flying to the region to cover the event.
Kensington Palace said last night the governments of Australia and New Zealand had invited the couple to visit. They had also decided to visit Fiji and Tonga at the request of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the UK.
