Welcomes, protests and a celebrity-chasing alpaca: Canberra greets Charles and Camilla
The royals received a warm welcome in Canberra, but the plight of Indigenous Australians and the future of the Australian republican movement hung over the event.
As King Charles and Queen Camilla were whisked away from Canberra Airport on their first tour Down Under, Robert Fletcher’s alpaca, Hephner, edged his way to the front of the crowd at the Australian War Memorial.
But when the moment for a royal pat arrived, Hephner bucked his head, leaving journalists scrambling to work out whether it was due to panic or a sneeze. The King flinched before quickly regaining his composure — a rare unscripted moment in an otherwise heavily coordinated tour.
“He’s met a few famous people over his time. He’s met the governor-general, Tones and I, Jimmy Barnes,” Fletcher told the ABC.
“We’ve spent a lot of time in the community in Canberra so we thought, ‘Why not? Let’s go and see royalty today’.”
