27 October 2024 , 09:11
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Royal visits to resume in spring subject to doctors’ approval, official says as trip to Australia and Samoa concludes
King Charles will return to regular overseas trips next year after the hiatus from official foreign duties he has taken since his cancer diagnosis, a palace official said.
Charles will fly abroad during the spring and autumn, the traditional periods for official overseas royal visits, provided that doctors approve the travel.
Speaking at the conclusion of the king and queen’s nine-day visit to Australia and Samoa on Saturday, a senior palace official said: “We’re now working on a pretty normal-looking full overseas tour programme for next year.
“Which is a high for us to end on, to know that we can be thinking in those terms, subject to signoff by doctors.”
Charles has been receiving treatment as an outpatient for an undisclosed form of cancer since early February and initially postponed all public-facing duties, continuing to work behind the scenes.
The trip to Australia and Samoa, which was the king’s first long-distance visit since his cancer diagnosis, had originally included New Zealand in the itinerary but this was ruled out on the advice of his doctors.
The king and queen undertook up to 10 engagements a day which were tailored specifically to accommodate periods of rest and included only one evening event.
The palace official added: “I think it’s great testament to the king’s devotion to service and duty that he was prepared to come this far and he was incredibly happy and very, very determined to do so.”
The king “genuinely loved” the tour and “genuinely thrived” on the Australian and Samoan programme, the official added, as it lifted “his spirits, his mood and his recovery.
“In that sense, the tour, despite its demands, has been the perfect tonic.”
He added the monarch takes great strength from the Queen being there, not least because she “keeps it real”.
There were some protests during the five-day visit to Australia including the monarch being heckled by the Indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe after addressing MPs and senators at Parliament House in Canberra.
Thorpe yelled at him: “This is not your country.
“You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us – our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people.”