SYDNEY, Oct 18, 2024 (AFP) - King Charles III touched down in Australia Friday, embarking on the most strenuous foreign trip since his life-changing cancer diagnosis eight months ago.

After a gruelling 20-plus hour journey, the 75-year-old monarch and his wife Queen Camilla landed in a rain-sodden Sydney, and were greeted by local dignitaries and posy-bearing children.

The king is on a nine-day tour of his far-flung Australian and Samoan realms that will showcase a busy public barbecue, famed landmarks and pressing climate dangers.

He is the first reigning monarch to set foot Down Under since 2011, when thronging crowds flocked to catch a white-gloved wave from his mother Queen Elizabeth II.

The king's long-planned trip is designed to bolster the monarchy among an increasingly disinterested Australian public, whose British heritage is now just one element in a melting-pot nation.

"I'd forgotten they were even coming," said 73-year-old Sydneysider Trevor Reeves, summing up the mood in Australia's largest city.
The visit is also said to be personally important to Charles, who had been forced to scale back public engagements while receiving ongoing cancer treatment.

There was an early hiccup, however, when plans to project a montage of images of Charles onto the sails of Sydney's famed Opera House were briefly delayed -- a cruise ship called the Queen Elizabeth was blocking the view.

But the week-long tour will undoubtedly bring pomp, ceremony and plenty of media coverage.

There will be extravagant mass gatherings, including an event in front of the Opera House and a bustling community barbecue.
 
- The lucky country -
Australia is a land of many happy memories for Charles.
He first visited as a gawky 17-year-old in 1966, when he was shipped away to the secluded alpine Timbertop school in regional Victoria.

"While I was here I had the Pommy bits bashed off me," he would later remark, describing it as "by far the best part" of his education.

Bachelor Charles was famously ambushed by a bikini-clad model on a later jaunt to Western Australia, who pecked him on the cheek in an instantly iconic photo of the young prince.

He returned with wife Diana in 1983, drawing mobs of adoring fans eager to see the "people's princess" at landmarks like the Sydney Opera House.
In 1994, a would-be gunman fired two blanks at Charles as he gave a speech on Sydney harbour -- a mock assassination staged as a human rights protest.

With six days in Australia and five more in Samoa, it will be Charles's longest overseas tour since starting treatment for an undisclosed form of cancer.

He made a brief trip to France this year for D-Day commemorations.
Prime Minister Albanese, a lifelong republican, has made no secret of his desire to one day sever ties with the monarchy.

Following the death of Queen Elizabeth, his government replaced the monarch's visage on the country's $5 note with an Indigenous motif.
A recent poll showed about a third of Australians would like to ditch the monarchy, a third would keep it and a third are ambivalent.

For now, at least, the question of a republic is a political non-starter.
Charles's looming presence has so far done little to stoke republican sentiment.

He carefully tiptoed around the question on the eve of his arrival, reportedly saying it was ultimately a "matter for the Australian public to decide".