By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his partner Jodie Haydon will meet privately with King Charles and Queen Camilla on the Sydney Harbour foreshore after the British monarch arrives on Friday evening, Australian officials said.
King Charles is making his inaugural visit to an overseas realm as sovereign, his first major foreign trip since being diagnosed with cancer.
It is the first visit by a reigning British monarch in 13 years to Australia.
The sails of the iconic Sydney Opera House will be illuminated on Friday night to welcome the royal couple, displaying a photographic montage of King Charles’s previous visits to Australia, where he attended school for six months as a teenager, and has returned more than a dozen times.
The royal couple will be greeted at the airport in Sydney by Albanese, Australia’s Governor-General Sam Mostyn and the Premier of New South Wales state Chris Minns, government officials said in a statement.
King Charles and Queen Camilla will meet privately with Albanese and Haydon at Admiralty House, an historic government foreshore residence overlooking the harbour and opera house.
“We are lighting up the Sydney Opera House to warmly welcome the King and Queen to our beautiful harbour city,” Minns said in a statement.
The royal couple are visiting Sydney and Canberra over six days, before travelling to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Jan Harvey)
