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The Crown: Why Princess Diana Burst Into Tears During 1983 Australian Tour

By Julie Miller

Princess Diana and Prince Charles’s 1983 Australian tour—recreated on the fourth season of The Crown —proved to be an inflection point in their young marriage . It was during that six-week visit to Australia and New Zealand when Charles first realized how much the public preferred his pretty young wife to him. And Diana, in turn, realized there was nothing she could do to temper her husband’s jealousy or convince him she didn’t want the spotlight.

At one point, during the real-life tour, the young princess even erupted into tears during a public appearance outside the Sydney Opera House. The photographer who captured the heart-wrenching image, Ken Lennox , has since explained what he saw that day.

“I’m about four feet from the princess and I’m trying to get a bit of the opera house in the background and some of the crowd, and Diana burst into tears and wept for a couple of minutes,” Lennox recalled during ITV’s Inside the Crown: Secrets of the Royals . “Charles I don’t think has noticed [Diana crying] at that stage. If he has, typical of Prince Charles to look the other way.” During that tour, Lennox said that crowds would plainly tell Charles, “Bring your wife over,” rather than fawn over the prince.

“The prince was embarrassed the crowds so clearly favored her over him,” wrote Sally Bedell Smith in her biography , Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life . “For her part, Diana was upset by the disproportionate interest in her, especially when she realized that it was disturbing Charles. She collapsed under the strain, weeping to her lady-in-waiting and secretly succumbing to bulimia. In letters to friends, Charles described his anguish over the impact ‘all this obsessed and crazed attention was having on his wife.’”

Diana biographer Andrew Morton has said that the Australia tour “was a terrifying baptism of fire. . .Just 21, the newly minted royal was petrified of facing the crowds, meeting the countless dignitaries as well as the fabled royal ‘rat pack,’ the media circus who follow the royals around the globe.”

Writing for the New York Post , Morton added:

“When she walked into the media reception in the unglamorous setting of an Alice Springs hotel, she was hot, jet-lagged and sunburned. Yet she was able to charm and captivate the representatives of the Fourth Estate. Only later did I realize that the tour was utterly traumatic. Back in the privacy of her hotel room, she cried her eyes out, unable to handle the constant attention. [...] It didn’t help that Prince Charles, the former top of the billing, was reduced to a walk-on part, the crowds groaning when he came to their side of the road during their many visits. As Diana told me: “He was jealous; I understood the jealousy but I couldn’t explain that I didn’t ask for it.”

The couple’s only happiness during the tour came when the young family was far away from the crowds—visiting nine-month-old Prince William at the cattle and sheep ranch Woomargama, where he was staying with a nanny.

“The great joy was that we were totally alone together,” Charles wrote a friend, according to Smith. At the ranch, Charles and Diana watched William’s first efforts at crawling—“at high speed knocking everything off the tables and causing unbelievable destruction.” The new parents, according to Charles, “laughed and laughed with sheer, hysterical pleasure.”

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The Crown: What Really Happened During Princess Diana and Prince Charles’s Fateful Tour of Australia

By Elise Taylor

The title of season four, episode six of The Crown is “Terra Nullius,” a Latin phrase that means “nobody’s land.” Creator Peter Morgan no doubt picked it due to the presiding plotline: Charles and Diana’s 1983 royal tour of Australia, which coincides with the country’s growing movement to leave the British Commonwealth. Nearly 200 years earlier, Great Britain used the concept of “terra nullius” to justify colonizing Australia, claiming the land was unclaimed and unpopulated, despite its residing Aboriginal population.

But it also serves as a double entendre: Diana and Charles also find themselves in uncharted territory, a no man’s land. This is their first overseas tour together—and with the monarchy in a perilous position, a successful impression is paramount. Can they put aside their early marital problems, their clashing personalities, for the Crown? Or are they doomed to fail? While, for a brief moment, Morgan depicts the two sharing a moment of true connection, they are soon at odds again. After the tour is done, Charles takes a car back to their country home of Highgrove, whereas Princess Diana hightails it back to Kensington Palace in London. They never found common ground.

The episode chalks up their cracks to a multitude of factors: Diana’s supposed fragility—Charles gets frustrated that she can’t hike up Ayers Rock (now renamed Uluru) without stopping. The presence of Prince William—Diana wanted to bring him on tour and is anxious about their separation, much to the dismay of the royal courtiers and their strict schedules. Then, perhaps most of all, there’s Diana’s explosive popularity, which overshadows Charles’s: “This was supposed to be my tour! My tour as Prince of Wales to shore up a key country in the Commonwealth at a very delicate moment politically!” Josh O’Connor’s Charles screams at Emma Corrin’s Diana.

The Crown , at the end of the day, is historical fiction—the show takes real-life events and dramatizes them. So, in this hour-long tale of a very well-known couple, what’s fact, and what’s fiction?

It’s true that this was a politically sensitive tour: A wave of Republicanism was sweeping Australia, championed by its Prime Minister at the time, Robert Hawke. On March 6, 1983, a mere 12 days before Charles and Diana were set to fly to the continent, a television interviewer asked if Charles would make a good king of Australia. “I don't think we will be talking about kings of Australia forever more,” he replied. Then he said he thought people would eventually vote to have a republic.

By Christian Allaire

Princess Diana, Prince Charles, and Prince William arrive in Alice Springs, Australia. Diana was the first royal to bring her baby on an overseas tour, breaking traditional protocol.

It’s also true that the monarchy was worried about how Diana would fare. The tour was a grueling one, by any standards: a month long, the couple were set to cover 30,000 miles and make up to eight appearances in one day. And while Prince Charles had been doing this type of work his whole life, it was 21-year-old Diana’s first overseas royal tour. “The Queen is ‘terribly worried’ before the tour because of Diana’s youth and apparent shyness,” wrote the Press Association’s royal correspondent Grania Forbes ahead of the trip.

It didn’t help that the British tabloids had already started to paint her as unpredictable—the Daily Mirror had recently published an exploitative story about rumors of her eating disorder. While the international press waited for the couple to land in Alice Springs, Australia from London, The Sydney Morning Herald ’s Alison Stuart recalled the reporters gossiping: “Would she snap, would she cry, would she collapse from the heat?”

At the beginning, Diana did indeed show signs of fatigue. The Sydney Morning Herald found that during the tour’s first engagement, she looked “uncomfortably sunburned” and that her “eyes were downcast.” Charles apologized and said they were both still suffering from jet-lag. On March 22—three days after they landed in Australia—an Associated Press report described her as red-faced and bare-legged. “I can’t cope with the heat very well,” she said.

Prince Charles and Princess Diana at Uluru. While The Crown suggests Diana struggled due to the heat, reports at the time say her hesitation was due to her rather impractical outdoor outfit.

In The Crown , a scene at Uluru supposedly showcases the princess’s early weakness. Only a few yards up the slope, Diana suddenly stops while the press pack eagerly snaps photos from below. “Charles, I can’t. The heat. I feel dizzy,” Corrin’s Diana exclaims. She leaves him to climb the rest alone. “I think I need to go and sit down.” Afterwards, O’Connor’s Charles snarls to his confidante Camilla Parker-Bowles on the phone: “She’s pathetic .”

Video footage at the time does show Diana hesitating on Uluru. Yet it wasn’t fatigue that caused the pause—rather, it was her outfit. Dressed in a dainty white frock with flats, it wasn’t, well, the most practical of hiking apparel. Especially when there are cameras below capturing your every move.

Here’s an account from the Morning Herald : “As she stepped off the plane at Ayers Rock, she looked down in horror. Her dress, buttoned down the front was immediately blown open revealing her petticoat and knees. From that moment, the Princess made constant but hopeless attempts to keep the dress closed,” they wrote. “When Charles coaxed her to climb part of the way up the rock, she hesitated, not through fear of slipping, but because she knew that coming down would expose her knees and petticoat to the world’s press.”

In reality, except for a few hiccups, Diana executed a remarkable performance in those initial days. “Despite the predictions, Diana, apart from some strain and tiredness, has fared well,” said the Morning Herald at the time. “She might be made of tougher stuff than many think.”

Prince Charles and Princess Diana get ready to dance in Sydney.

As the royal tour really got into the swing of things—and Diana’s sunburn and jet lag likely died down—Charles and Diana thoroughly charmed the country. They dynamically danced at Sheraton Wentworth Hotel, with Diana donning a spectacular turquoise dress. Charles scored a goal at a polo match in Sydney and the crowd erupted into cheers. (As The Crown shows, he did also fall, much to his chagrin.) In Perth, they made headlines when Charles tenderly kissed Diana’s hand in public. “Prince plays the gallant at royal party,” read a headline in the Times of London. And although that scene that shows Charles and Diana playing with baby Prince William on a blanket actually took place in New Zealand, not Australia, they did delight audiences by sharing cheerful tales about their young son. (Yes, William did love his stuffed koala.)

Diana’s popularity started to massively eclipse that of her husband. “The Princess of Wales was the woman they’d come to see, and the people of the Riverland weren’t disappointed,” a broadcaster from ABC said on April 6. “The Princess seemed more anxious to meet the people than did her husband. She dispensed tidbits concerning Prince William’s health, the weather, and jokingly inquired of an elderly citizen if she had any whiskey in her picnic basket.” They showed clips of Diana swarmed by crowds, one man holding up a sign that read “Di is beautiful.” On April 15, the Melbourne Herald ran a cartoon that showed a map of Australia superimposed with a heart. “Princess Diana,” read a caption. “A permanent imprint!” Two days later, the Sydney Herald echoed the same sentiment: “Di Thrills the Queen!” said a headline.

Three days later, the Times of London cemented Diana’s smashing success. They printed the headline “The Princess who won the heart of Australia.” The story began: “The month-long tour of Australia by the Prince and Princess of Wales, which ended yesterday when the royal couple flew to New Zealand, was an unqualified success, due in large part to the Princess. She won the heart of Australia.” The Evening Standard took it one step further, saying: ”This tour has set Republicanism back 10 years.” In Sarah Bradford’s book , Diana , she quotes a bodyguard who said her reception in Australia was akin to Beatlemania.

Princess Diana, surrounded by crowds outside the Sydney Opera House.

Sadly, The Crown is right: Diana’s supernova star-power in Australia did make Charles jealous, and caused additional tension in their marriage. In a 1995 interview with the BBC , the Princess recalled that the attention she received during the tour’s royal walkabouts upset him. “We'd be going round Australia, for instance, and all you could hear was, ‘oh, she's on the other side.’ Now, if you're a man—like my husband—a proud man, you mind about that if you hear it every day for four weeks. You feel low about it, instead of feeling happy and sharing it.” The press fawning made things worse: “With the media attention came a lot of jealousy. A great deal of complicated situations arose because of that,” she said. It was, in some ways, the beginning of the end.

Photos show the true story behind Princess Diana's famous Australia tour featured on 'The Crown'

• In March 1983, Princess Diana flew to Australia with Prince Charles and her son, Prince William, for her first-ever overseas tour. 
• The four weeks Diana spent in Australia solidified her reputation as the "people's princess," but created a rift between her and Charles.
• The 1983 tour has come back into focus because it's one of the key storylines in season four of Netflix's " The Crown ."
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories .

"Uneasy, even glum" is how a news report described Princess Diana when she arrived in Alice Springs, Australia, for her first-ever overseas tour with Prince Charles.

For Diana, only 21 years old and just two years into her marriage with Prince Charles, the highly public tour was a "terrifying baptism of fire," Diana's confidant and biographer Andrew Morton wrote for the New York Post in 2017.

But by the end of the tour four weeks later, Diana had solidified her reputation as the "people's princess," charming her way into the hearts of Australians at a time when the monarchy was looking to repair public opinion in the Commonwealth.

The tour is a central focus of season four of Netflix's " The Crown ." Released on November 15, the newest season depicts the lives of the British monarchy from 1979 through 1990.  Episode six, "Terra Nullius," shows how young Diana, played by actress Emma Corrin, eclipsed Prince Charles, played by actor Josh O'Connor, in fame as they traveled around Australia, causing a rift between the royal pair. 

Here's how the real-life tour happened and a look back in photos.

On March 20, 1983, 21-year-old Princess Diana arrived with her husband Prince Charles in Alice Springs, Australia, for her first-ever overseas royal tour.

Source: Beneath the Crown

The royal couple would spend four weeks touring Australia in order to repair public opinion of the monarchy.

In a break with royal tradition, Diana insisted that her 9-month-old son, Prince William, travel with them. Previously, children of heirs had remained in England during overseas tours.

While his parents toured the country, Prince William stayed with his nanny at the family's home base, a sheep ranch in central Australia called Woomargama.

Source: The Age , PM Transcripts

The royal couple's first official stop was at Uluru, a sacred site to indigenous Australians also know as Ayers Rock.

During the visit, Diana expressed her discomfort with the heat and asked for a glass of water. This endeared Diana to the public, Anita Rani explains in an episode of Netflix's "Beneath the Crown," since "royals were not supposed to show such emotions in public."

Newly inducted Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, who had publicly expressed his desire to lessen Australia's ties to the British crown on TV, met with the young couple three days later.

Source:  Beneath the Crown

Hawke was skeptical that the royal couple could charm Australians and rebuild public faith in the monarchy, according to BBC's HistoryExtra. What he didn't count on was Diana's likability.

Source: HistoryExtra

Australians quickly fell in love with Diana's easygoing manner and showed up in droves to see her.

"Diana...was accessible to the public, physically and emotionally," Netflix's Rani said. "She's estimated to have shaken hands at least 6,000 times with members of the public on this tour and offered down-to-earth comments to her admirers."

"Mothers, in particular, gravitated towards her, impressed by her refusal to leave William back in the UK," Rani said.

A photo taken one week after their arrival in Australia shows Diana outside of the Sydney Opera House surrounded by throngs of spectators.

Source: Getty

In April, The Times ran an article saying that Diana "won the heart of Australia" and that the tour was "an unqualified success, due in large part to the Princess."

Source: The Times

While Diana's star appeal helped the reputation of the monarchy, it served to "drive a wedge" between her and Charles, who was used to the limelight, Andrew Morton wrote in his 1992 biography "Diana: Her True Story."

Source: Diana: Her True Story

"The crowds complained when Prince Charles went over to their side of the street during a walkabout ... In public, Charles accepted the revised status quo with good grace; in private he blamed Diana," Morton wrote.

The couple did have good moments during the trip. One was during a charity ball in Sydney on March 28 where they shared their first dance together on tour. "They gave the impression that they were very much in love," Rani said of the dance.

But tension grew between them as Diana's fame blossomed. "With the media attention came a lot of jealousy," Diana told the BBC in a 1995 broadcast. "A great deal of complicated situations arose because of that."

Source: BBC

On April 17, Diana and Charles concluded their tour in Australia and flew to New Zealand for two weeks before returning home to London.

While Diana had worked her way into the hearts of Australians, the trip highlighted fissures in her marriage with Charles that would ultimately deepen over time.

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Inside the Australia Trip that Made Princess Diana a Star

Diana said she was a "different person" upon her return.

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• The season's ninth episode, "Terra Nullis," focuses on Charles and Diana's six week-long trip to Australia in 1983.
• Here's the truth behind that precedent-breaking trip, including how Diana refused to leave young Prince William behind.

Technically , Diana Spencer became Princess Diana in 1981, when she married Prince Charles , heir to the English throne. But as season 4 of The Crown shows, Diana's growth into a figure of international adoration and respect—the so-called "People's Princess" —took more time.

"Terra Nullis," episode 9 of The Crown , depicts a turning point in Diana's personal life and public image–and the intersection of the two. Diana's first trip abroad would prove to be a pivotal one: The 22-year-old established herself as an instantly charming presence, fashion icon, and a royal rule-breaker.

Fast forwarding past the couple's elaborate royal wedding, The Crown instead uses the 1983 tour to capture the charged early years of Charles and Diana's marriage. In every scene, a new facet in their complicated union emerges. Charles's shock, and eventual jealousy, of Diana's effortless star status. Diana's longing to be adored by Charles and the crowds. Their commitment to work on their relationship—and how fragile those vows became, when tested by their unique circumstances.

For all these reasons, "Terra Nullis" is this season's stand-out episode. Here's the truth behind the trip that made Diana a star.

Princess Diana won over crowds of Australians.

Charles and Diana traveled to Australia at a tense time in the countries' relationships. Australia had just elected the Labour leader Robert James Lee "Bob" Hawke in a landslide, and he wanted to eliminate Australia's ties to the Commonwealth and monarchy—essentially, everything that the Prince and Princess of Wales represented.

"The tour had a serious political goal—persuading the grumpy and increasingly Republican Australian continent that it still wanted a monarchy in the first place," Tina Brown wrote in The Diana Chronicles .

But according to Brown, Diana's vast popularity, which drew 400,000 people in Brisbane alone, "turned the whole mood around." Diana and her charming "lack of pretension" even "mesmerized" Bob Hawke, per Brown. "By the end of Charles and Diana's tour, a poll in Australia found that Monarchists outnumbered Republicans two to one..the twenty-one year old Princess of Wales had proved she was a dazzling new PR person for the British Crown," Brown wrote.

Years later, Diana told biographer Andrew Morton that she was a "different person" upon returning to England. She was a star.

Prince Charles was reportedly jealous of Diana's star power.

Australians rushed to catch a glimpse of Diana. They were less enthused to see Charles. According to Brown, people would "openly [groan] in disappointment."

"Victor Chapman, the press secretary on the tour, got used to late-night phone calls from Charles complaining about the scant coverage of himself in the press compared to the hagiographic acres accorded of his wife," Brown wrote, cheekily.

Charles's letters written from the trip, seen in Penny Junor's book Prince William , give insight into his mindset. "I do feel desperate for Diana. There is no twitch she can make without these ghastly, and I am quite convinced, mindless people photographing it...How can anyone, let alone a 21-year-old, be expected to come out of this obsessed and crazed attention unscathed?"

Breaking with royal protocol, Diana refused to leave Prince William in England.

In The Crown , Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman) casually establishes how royal tours normally proceeded: The parents traveled, and the kids stayed home. "We never took the children anywhere. When we took the children to Australia in 1954, we left them at home for six months," Elizabeth says in The Crown .

Diana broke with generations of royal precedent by refusing to leave her son, 10-month-old Prince William, in England while they were away, per E! News. Instead, William stayed at a "sheep station" (a large ranch) in Australia and the couple flew back repeatedly to visit him between destinations.

Yes, Diana spoke about Prince William's stuffed animals on a radio show.

As probably already gathered by this point, Diana was a major hit in Australia. During their stop in Alice Springs, Diana and Charles took a trip to a local radio station. In The Crown , Diana brings up Prince William's whale stuffed animal unprompted, whereas in real life, Charles whispered the idea to her. Brown, in The Diana Chronicles , wrote that Diana's lack of pretension about topics like motherhood is what helped her win over many Australians.

And they climbed Uluru, as Prince William would do with his wife in 2014.

In The Crown , Charles and Diana visit Uluru, a large sandstone rock formation that rises suddenly out of the desert in central Australia, and is sacred to indigenous Australians, per the BBC . As Life's special edition Diana: A Princess Remembered notes, the princess wore "not-so-suitable" shoes for the rigorous climb.

A video captures Diana and Charles scaling the start of the 2,831" rock—though not the part where Diana turns around.

In 2014, in a real full-circle moment, Prince William—who had been a baby on his parents' trip—visited Australia with his wife, Kate Middleton, and their son, Prince George (in line to inherit the throne). The Cambridges recreated Charles and Diana's photo opp before Uluru, taken 31 years prior, per Vanity Fair .

The couple made headlines for dancing.

As "Terra Nullis" shows so well, Charles and Diana's marriage had its triumphs and moments of synergy. One such moment occurred on the dance floor of a charity ball.

A video taken that evening captures their Dancing With the Stars -worthy moves.

They danced multiple times that tour, actually.

Diana spent time with Australian lifeguards, just as Princess Margaret once did.

If you're a lifeguard at Australia's famous Bondi Beach, there's a good chance you may, one day, get to speak to a visiting royal. Diana visited Terrigal Beach in 1983.

In her book Lady in Waiting , Lady Glenconner recalls accompanying Princess Margaret to Bondi Beach during an official trip to Australia in 1975. Unlike Diana, she wasn't as taken with her surroundings.

"One of the things on the itinerary for Sydney was a visit to Bondi Beach, which included a photo call on the sand with the lifeguards. On discovering this, Princess Margaret wasn’t happy. The idea of sinking into the sand during a formal engagement was not something she was interested in," Glenconner wrote, per an excerpt in OprahMag.com . Margaret was eventually persuaded to change into her flat shoes and proceed with the engagement, but was ultimately not pleased: “But weren’t those lifeguards disappointing?” she said.

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Elena Nicolaou is the former culture editor at Oprah Daily. 

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How did Charles and Diana get along during their 1983 tour of Australia?

In the show, the tour gets off to a rocky start, as Charles (Josh O'Connor) and Diana (Emma Corrin) are both awkward in front of the press and miserable in private. Their public stumbling is accurate—Charles made a couple of gaffes that went down poorly down under, including a joke about feeding Prince William “warm milk and minced kangaroo,” which reportedly upset animal lovers.

In his infamous 1992 biography Diana: Her True Story—In Her Own Words , Andrew Morton called the tour "a test of endurance for Diana." The couple were greeted by hysterical crowds in many of the cities they visited, and Diana was "jet-lagged, anxious and sick with bulimia," per Morton.

Diana's turmoil was not particularly well-hidden, and at one point she burst into tears during a public appearance outside the Sydney Opera House. A photographer who captured the moment, Ken Lennox, described it during the documentary Inside the Crown: Secrets of the Royals, per Vanity Fair :

I’m about four feet from the princess and I’m trying to get a bit of the opera house in the background and some of the crowd, and Diana burst into tears and wept for a couple of minutes. Charles I don’t think has noticed [Diana crying] at that stage. If he has, typical of Prince Charles to look the other way.

So although we don't know exactly what happened behind closed doors, it seems safe to assume that Charles and Diana really were fighting in private, as the show depicts. One source of tension, according to Morton in his biography, was Charles's jealousy—Diana was overshadowing him, and he knew it:

While Diana looked to her husband for a lead and guidance, the way the press and public reacted to the royal couple merely served to drive a wedge between them. The crowds complained when Prince Charles went over to their side of the street during a walkabout… In public, Charles accepted the revised status quo with good grace; in private he blamed Diana.

But there were some notable high points, including Charles and Diana's dance together at a charity ball in Sydney. The public impression of the couple was, at this time, that they were very much in love.

Was there pushback to Charles and Diana bringing Prince William to Australia?

Not quite. Onscreen, Diana very reasonably refused to leave her 10-month-old son behind in England for weeks. She insists on bringing William along, angering Charles and many royal advisers in the process. Royal protocol dictates that two heirs should not travel together on the same trip in order to protect the line of succession—then, as now, Charles was first in line to the throne while William was second. This meant bringing William was breaking protocol.

But in real life, Diana didn't push the subject. In fact, according to Morton's biography, she was "all ready to leave William. I accepted that as part of duty, albeit it wasn’t going to be easy.” It was only when the former Australian prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, suggested they bring William that they realized it was a possibility.

And though William was separated from his parents for much of the tour, the family did enjoy some happy times together in Australia. In in her biography of Prince Charles (per Vanity Fair ) , Sally Bedell Smith describes a letter Charles wrote to a friend in which he recounts a particularly blissful moment with Diana and William. "The great joy was that we were totally alone together,” he wrote, recalling he and Diana watched William crawling around "at high speed knocking everything off the tables and causing unbelievable destruction," as they "laughed and laughed with sheer, hysterical pleasure.”

Did Charles and Diana's visit really prevent Australia from abolishing the monarchy?

The Crown depicts Charles and Diana's visit as having major political implications. In the show, newly-elected prime minister Bob Hawke is forced to make a U-turn in his plan to remove Australia from royal rule as part of the Commonwealth and turn the country into a republic. Why? Because Diana is so extraordinarily popular that public opinion has turned in favor of the monarchy.

Diana: Her True Story—In Her Own Words

"She's made us both look like chumps," Hawke tells Charles. "No offense, but if it'd just been you, I'd have got my wishes. But then she comes along!"

Though there's no evidence that a conversation like this actually took place between Hawke and Charles, the implication is otherwise pretty accurate. Throughout the 1970s, the popularity of the monarchy had been in decline in Australia, and Hawke was a staunch republican who made no secret of his feeling that the country would be better off as an independent nation.

But Diana was so beloved across the nation by the end of her tour with Charles that the republican cause had been set back by "two decades." When the country held a referendum in 1999 to vote on the possibility of becoming a republic, the public voted no. Today, though, polls suggest that public opinion in Australia is once again shifting away from the monarchy .

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The Crown has put Prince Charles and Princess Diana's Royal visit to Australia in 1983 in the spotlight. So what happened?

It was, as Princess Diana's "long-time confidant" would later recall , a "baptism of fire" for the fledgling royal.

Stepping onto the tarmac at Alice Springs airport, into the throes of eager dignitaries and the voracious media pack, the then-21-year-old was "uneasy, even glum" , staring at the ground "with downcast eyes throughout much of the brief airport picture session".

Fast forward a month, and the woman once described by reporters as having to "work mightily to produce ... the smile of a proud and happy young mother" would have the heart of the nation in her hands, cementing her status as "the people's princess".

Prince Charles, Princess Diana and baby William's debut visit to Australia as a family in March 1983 is now the subject of the fourth season of Netflix's blockbuster royal drama, The Crown, which explores simmering jealousies and growing fractures within the monarchy.

"While Charles' romance with a young Lady Diana Spencer (Emma Corrin) provides a much-needed fairytale to unite the British people," the series bills, "behind closed doors, the Royal family is becoming increasingly divided."

So what actually happened during the Royal visit? We've taken a look back through the archives.

'The toughest test Diana has faced'

Few, least of all Princess Diana, were unaware of the visit's significance.

Just two years into her marriage with Prince Charles, it would be the new royal's first-ever overseas tour — and at a time of political delicacies.

The dismissal of the Whitlam Government in 1975 had damaged public perceptions of the monarchy , while Bob Hawke — an avowed republican — had been elected prime minister just two weeks prior to their arrival.

"The tour Down Under is likely to provide the toughest test Diana has faced since she became a Royal," reporter James Whitaker wrote for UK newspaper the Daily Mirror, ahead of the 1983 visit.

"One of her first priorities will be to 'chat up' Australia's new Labor prime minister, Bob Hawke, a man committed to republicanism."

Though British media were confident the "new Royal combination" would "melt any republican heart", Princess Diana — who the nation only knew from afar — was "petrified of facing the crowds, meeting the countless dignitaries as well as the fabled royal 'rat pack'," her biographer Andrew Morton would later write of the visit .

Reports from the time suggest that upon her arrival in Alice Springs, the princess appeared upset and "stood holding Prince William with something less than a smile on her face".

"A clucky English woman journalist suggested the reason might have been that nine-months-old Prince William was about to be taken from her for the best part of three days, and cared for by the two Royal nannies at Woomargama, near Albury, while the Royal couple completed the Central Australian leg of their four-week Australian tour," journalist Geoffery Barker wrote for The Age .

"Whatever the reason, Princess Diana had to work mightily to produce for the photographers the smile of a proud and happy young mother."

A shaky start

For the Royal couple, the trip was off to a shaky start — in more ways than one.

In the days leading up to their visit, the typically dry Todd River had burst its banks, flooding the power station and leaving Alice Springs without power.

Unable to reach their luxury accommodation, the pair were instead handballed to the Gap Motel.

"It's not the Palace, true," read the front page of the Daily Mirror, which had been sold exclusive photos from inside the suite, taken just hours before the royals' arrival.

"But there's a bath in the corner, a telly you can watch in bed, a plastic wastepaper bin — and it's only 70 quid a night."

The tour, which would span thousands of kilometres through Australia and New Zealand and include up to eight public appearances per day , was always going to be gruelling, and a few hiccups were to be expected.

But Princess Diana's "youth and apparent shyness" had reportedly prompted concerns from the Queen, and — in the early days of the arrival, at least — it would seem the cracks were beginning to show.

"The 21-year-old princess, looking sunburnt after her three-hour sunbath in the blistering heat yesterday, was clearly nervous before the microphone as she gave her first radio interview," the Evening Chronicle reported on March 21, 1983.

"She giggled rather nervously and let Prince Charles do most of the talking."

A 'once in a lifetime' welcome

Despite the shaky start, the "people's princess" — a moniker that has stood the test of time — was hardly an unknown quantity.

As British media pointed out ahead of the trip, "the Aussies and Kiwis have had all the pre-tour publicity".

"They've been hearing for more than two years how wonderful Diana is," wrote the Daily Mirror. "Now they will be able to judge for themselves."

And judge they did.

Princess Diana's apparent "lack of pretension" struck a chord with the Australian public, even "mesmerizing" the avowedly-republican Hawke and his then-wife Hazel.

"She is very charming. She is also lovely. But those eyes of hers — they are so beautiful," Mrs Hawke told the Daily Mirror on March 23, 1983, shortly after meeting the Royal couple.

"Likewise. I would like to say the same," added the PM.

From city to city, the headlines painted a familiar story.

Residents of " flood-ravaged Alice Springs were won over by Princess Diana - even before she arrived ", declared the Evening Mirror, while frenzied crowds of more than 100,000 "mobbed" Princess Diana during a Royal walkabout in Brisbane.

The "normally cynical people" of Sydney, meanwhile, put on a " ticker-tape welcome only seen once in a lifetime ".

"The people of this most sophisticated of Australian cities went wild for the delicate 21-year-old English rose and mobbed her from one side of town to the other," wrote the Newcastle Evening Chronicle on March 28, 1983.

Prince Charles 'jealous' of Diana's popularity

While Peter Morgan, the man behind The Crown, concedes "When I write ... there are the things that I want to be the case and there are the things that are the case" , there is some truth to the narrative that Diana's intense popularity only exacerbated simmering jealousies within her marriage.

Prince Charles, who had been largely reduced to a "walk-on" role throughout the tour, was reportedly upset at being overshadowed.

"Victor Chapman, the press secretary on the tour, got used to late-night phone calls from Charles complaining about the scant coverage of himself in the press compared to the hagiographic acres accorded of his wife," Tina Brown wrote in her 2007 biography, The Diana Chronicles .

Princess Diana herself would later remark that she was taken back by the response from the public: "[Charles] wasn't used to that and nor was I".

"He took it out me," she told Morton . "He was jealous; I understood the jealousy but I couldn't explain that I didn't ask for it."

As Morton, her "long-time confidant" tells it, the tour was "utterly traumatic" for the Princess of Wales. In the privacy of her hotel room, he wrote, she "cried her eyes out, unable to handle the constant attention".

Her separation from Prince William, who was just nine-months-old at the time, only made their Australian debut more difficult.

Princess Diana's reluctance to leave his side (an experience she described as "like torture" ) was largely incongruous with royal protocol and, during a visit to Canberra, she spoke of the life "she would really like to lead — that of a humble housewife, raising her son".

"I wish I didn't have to leave William with his Nanny," she told the wife of an army training officer in Canberra . "I'd much rather be doing what you are doing."

A lasting legacy

While Princess Diana may have been " overwhelmed by the size of the crowds in a nation gripped by Di-mania ", it would seem the tour had served its purpose.

The Royal family had been catapulted "even more into the public eye", newspaper reports noted in the days and weeks following, paving the way for what the Liverpool Echo described as a "massive exodus to Australia by British holidaymakers".

In one particularly tounge-in-cheek op-ed for the Sydney Morning Herald, satirist Alan Fitzgerald went as far to suggest that, given the public reception, Australia should establish "our own home-grown monarchy", led by the Royal couple.

"The Royal boys would naturally be enrolled at The Kings School, Parramatta, and be brought up to open fetes, cut ribbons, visit Ayers Rock, make good after-dinner speeches and ultimately, become State Governors," he quipped.

While The Crown stretches its artistic licence when it comes to Diana's influence on national opinions of the monarchy (perhaps none more so than when Hawke is purported to have remarked, "That superstar may have just set back the cause of republicanism in Australia for the foreseeable future"), the Princess of Wales emerged from the royal tour as "seasoned, media sophisticate with the stamina and charm of a big-time star", according to Brown.

"By the end of Charles and Diana's tour a poll in Australia found that monarchists outnumbered republicans two to one, and that was the point, wasn't it?" she wrote .

"The young Princess of Wales had proved she was a dazzling new PR weapon for the British Crown."

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What Princess Diana and Prince Charles's 1983 Tour of Australia Looked Like in Real Life

Yes, little Prince William was there too.

Though the trip proved to be a diplomatic success, The Crown 's interpretation of the tour highlighted personal road bumps for Charles and Diana. He resented the public's adoration for her, while she was jealous of his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles. Diana also had to go through lengths to be able to bring a nine-month-old William with her and Charles abroad, rather than be apart from him for the six-week trip. Her decision, which raised the queen's eyebrows on the Netflix series, ultimately established a new precedent in the family. As we've seen with modern royals, Duchess Kate and Prince William went on tour with Prince George and Princess Charlotte, while Duchess Meghan and Prince Harry have taken their young son, Archie Mountbatten-Windsor, abroad as well.

Flip through the photos here to see how The Crown 's depiction of the events compare to the real thing. And see how well the show did re-creating some of Diana's most memorable looks from the voyage.

March 20, 1983

Princess Diana carries a baby Prince William as she and Prince Charles arrive at Alice Springs, Australia.

March 21, 1983

The couple visit Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, in Uluru National Park in Australia's Northwestern Territory.

Charles and Diana walk together at Uluru.

Charles and Diana meet schoolchildren in Alice Springs.

March 22, 1983

Diana boards a plane in a white blouse and blue skirt as she leaves Alice Springs.

March 25, 1983

Diana waves while she and Charles visit victims of bushfires.

Diana sports a baby-pink number with a matching feathered hat in Canberra, Australia.

March 30, 1983

Charles and Diana attend a reception in Hobart, Tasmania. She wears a red Bruce Oldfield dress with the Spencer family tiara.

Diana wears a blue, ruffled Bruce Oldfield dress while dancing with the Prince of Wales in Sydney.

While visiting Newcastle, Australia, with Charles, Diana wears a light pink dress by Catherine Walker and a hat by John Boyd.

Charles and Diana arrive in Hobart, Tasmania. The princess wears a Bellville Sassoon suit and John Boyd hat.

April 6, 1983

While driving through Memorial Oval in Port Pirie, Australia, Diana wears a Jan Van Velden suit and a John Boyd hat. Charles smiles at the crowd in a gray suit.

April 7, 1983

In one of her most iconic looks, a pink polka-dot ensemble by Donald Campbell and hat by John Boyd, the Princess of Wales greets fans in Perth, Australia.

Diana smiles at the crowds gathered in Perth.

April 8, 1983

The princess greets a well-wisher during a ride at the Hands Oval sportsground in Bunbury, Australia.

April 14, 1983

Diana wears a red polka-dot ensemble at the opening of the Bourke Street Mall in Melbourne.

April 17, 1983

Dressed in a blue hat and red printed dress, Diana waves goodbye as she and Charles board the plane to leave Melbourne.

April 18, 1983

The Princess of Wales greets a Maori woman at the Eden Park stadium in Auckland, New Zealand.

April 20, 1983

Diana wears a dress designed by the Emanuels, who made her wedding gown, to a state banquet in New Zealand. She's joined by the prime minister of New Zealand, Robert Muldoon, and Charles.

Diana and Charles play with William on the gardens of the Government House.

Erica Gonzales is the Senior Culture Editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage on TV, movies, music, books, and more. She was previously an editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com. There is a 75 percent chance she's listening to Lorde right now. 

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From the archives: See The Weekly’s covers featuring Prince Charles & Princess Diana during their first years of romance, as the new season of The Crown delves into their courtship

If you’re watching the new season of The Crown from Australia, you’ll likely be intrigued by one particular storyline.

Known for its accuracy in depicting real-life events, The Crown has quickly garnered a reputation as an (albeit dramatised) interpretation of the many milestone royal events that have occurred since Queen Elizabeth II took the throne in 1952.

After three whirlwind seasons, The Crown fans are now privy to a depiction of the royal family’s key moments from the 1980s – namely, the relationship between Princess Diana and Prince Charles.

It’s one of the most iconic romances of all time, and one that the world will forever be inquisitive about.

And in a big moment for Australia, their famous tour of the country in 1983 is set to bring a refreshed perspective on the globally renowned photo opportunities that it posed.

The Australian Women’s Weekly covered the early days of Charles and Diana’s courtship, which is set to be brought to life in the new season of The Crown .

As a show striving to make its narrative as realistic as possible , the production team behind The Crown approached the Australian Women’s Weekly to ask for permission to mock up covers of the magazine at the time the Australian tour took place.

If you watch closely, viewers will see copies of The Australian Women’s Weekly in a couple of shots (see the mock ups below) in the episode covering the tour.

The Weekly covers can be spotted in the latest season of The Crown .

The Crown producers called The Weekly to ask for permission to mock up some vintage covers of the magazine from the 1983 tour.

In comparison, this is an archived Australian Women’s Weekly cover featuring Charles and Diana a few years before their Australian tour.

What happened on Charles and Diana’s Australian tour?

The whirlwind Australian tour of Prince Charles and Princess Diana captured the world’s attention in a way no other royal tour had before.

Firstly, the month-and-a-half long journey marked the very first overseas royal tour Diana had ever made.

It was also Prince William’s first ever tour. He was nine-months-old at the time, and while it was standard practice at the time for royal babies to remain in the care of others at home, it is believed Diana simply didn’t want to part with him.

The new royal parents visited Uluru among other places during the milestone tour of Australia.

During the Australian tour, the royal couple visited Ayers Rock (which is now known as Uluru). They also attended multiple events in Sydney, Melbourne, Newcastle, Alice Springs and more.

Among their engagements were balls, school visits and many, many walkabouts.

And at 22, Diana had quickly established herself as a fashion icon – some of her most renowned style moments were front and centre during the tour, including her stunning pink Victor Edelstein gown and the Spencer Tiara which she wore in Brisbane.

Diana’s iconic pink Victor Edelstein dress was worn during her tour of Australia in 1983.

The tour was undoubtedly one of their most famous, and it’s easy to see why given the global attention the royal pair garnered.

Indeed, it set a precedent for modern royal tours – Duchess Catherine and Prince William have also opted to to bring their children along to overseas trips in the past, and last year, Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan brought their baby son Archie on a tour to South Africa.

With this in mind, we’ll be watching The Crown ‘s portrayal of the visit with much interest – not least to keep our eyes peeled for that Weekly cover.

Royal doppelgängers: See The Crown’s season four cast next to their real life royal counterparts

Want more info on the crown’s new season check out the stories below.

Playing Princess Diana: The Crown’s Emma Corrin on why she thinks Diana never really stood a chance A fast approaching release date and new Aussie connections: The Crown’s remaining seasons are gearing up to be a wild ride Gird your crown jewels: New pics from the hotly anticipated fourth season of The Crown have dropped, and we’re in for a right royal spectacle The emotional story behind Prince Charles and Camilla Shand’s early (and doomed) relationship of the 1970s EXCLUSIVE: “It was daunting”: Jessica De Gouw talks joining The Crown and new drama The Secrets She Keeps

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Gird your crown jewels: New pics from the hotly anticipated fourth season of The Crown have dropped, and we’re in for a right royal spectacle

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The Crown S4 E6 real history: Charles and Diana’s 1983 royal tour of Australia & the start of ‘Dianamania’

Episode 6 of season 4 of The Crown sees Charles and Diana, deep in the midst of marital troubles, called upon to tour Australia and New Zealand in an effort to stem feelings of republicanism in one of the Commonwealth’s key countries

• Elinor Evans
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Diana’s priorities as a mother become clear and the couple are seen to momentarily reconcile. Meanwhile, the tour is hailed as a huge success. But how historically accurate is all this? Let’s unpick the historical truths of episode 6…

(This article contains spoilers for season 4, episode 6 of The Crown)

Episode six of the new season brings the marriage of Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, back to centre stage, covering the couple’s 1983 tour of Australia. It was the job of incumbent Australian Labour prime minister Bob Hawke to welcome the young royals to the Commonwealth country as part of a royal tour aimed at shoring up the royal family’s reputation. Hawke is clearly sceptical about Charles’s ability “as a different breed” to connect with the Australian public, and there is a lot riding on the tour. In reality, Hawke did want Australia to become a republic by 1988; in The Crown it’s made clear to Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) and Princess Diana (Emma Corrin) ahead of their tour that if Australia were to strike out on its own away from the Commonwealth, other countries would “fall like dominoes”, in the words of one adviser.

The Queen (Olivia Colman) expresses her hope that the couple will be alright. Yet amid a harrowing depiction of Diana’s struggle with the eating disorder bulimia, and Prince Charles’s visits to the Parker Bowles estate, it seems as though the tour will be anything but.

In the opening scenes of episode 6, the strength of Charles and Camilla’s enduring chemistry is made plain as the pair perform a joke at a dinner party while Camilla’s husband, Andrew Parker Bowles, looks on. Charles and Camilla’s relationship was, according to most records, platonic during this stage of Charles’s marriage to Diana, and royal expert Penny Junor says that he and Camilla were not mixing socially: “If Camilla knew Charles would be at a party during this time, she didn’t go.”

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It is true that Andrew knew about Charles and Camilla’s close connection. And he had been aware of their initial affair in the late 1970s, over which he “didn’t make a fuss,” writes Junor in her biography of Camilla, explaining that Andrew’s own infidelities perhaps made it difficult for him to complain.

Charles and Camilla started seeing one another again in 1986, and Camilla would visit Charles at Highgrove, “although usually in the company of Andrew or other friends,” says Junor. Gradually it turned into a sexual relationship. In some ways this was “a perfect arrangement” because it allowed Camilla to see the prince while Andrew continued his own affair with Rosemary Pitman, says Junor.

• Historian Sarah Gristwood reviews The Crown season 4: “We’ve reached the issue of how fiction influences opinion in the real world”

The royal tour begins

Hearing that Diana wishes to take the baby Prince William on the tour, the Queen expresses disbelief. (During the Queen’s 1954 tour of Australia, five-year-old Charles and three-year-old Anne remained at home in the care of nursery staff and Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. The pair were famously greeted by their mother with handshakes upon her return.) In contrast to Queen Elizabeth’s hands-off parenting, Diana hovers over nine-month-old William on the flight to Australia, describing him as “perfect in every way”, making clear her feelings at being separated from her son for two weeks (when William was stationed at a large sheep ranch in Woomargama with his nannies).

Diana tells Charles and his aides she is determined to bring up her son with “a vestige of humanity”.

This is true to history. “I want to bring them up with security,” Diana is quoted in Andrew Morton’s 1992 biography as having said. “I hug my children to death and get into bed with them at night. I always feed them love and affection; it’s so important.”

• Princess Diana: a "modern" mother who ripped up the rule book

Yet this desire to be close to her children (rather than leaving them behind while she carried out her official role), and her very public displays of affection, were incongruous with how the royals had always done things. The drama chooses to show this through royal aide Edward Adeane, who tells Diana: “You married the Prince of Wales, ma’am. And that is an act of service… which you signed up to for willingly and with open eyes.”

This, surely, would have been what Charles had hoped for, too. Penny Junor says: “In the mid-1970s, when asked about marriage, Charles had said that when he marries it must be to someone who understands what she’s marrying into; who understands the job. And because it would have to be a marriage for life (because divorce was out of the question), this is one area where his heart must be ruled by his head, he said.

“Charles understood that his marriage wouldn’t be any old love match, he couldn’t just marry someone he was utterly mad about and live happily ever after. His wife would one day be queen and would have a hell of a lot of royal work to do. She would need to have the discipline to put up with the life she was entering into – no spontaneity, no freedom, no privacy. His wife would have to understand and be willing to accept all these handicaps.”

Read the real history behind more episodes with our S4 episode guide to The Crown:

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Reception in Australia

In episode 6 of The Crown , Charles and Diana initially seem to flounder when arriving in Australia. A press report from the royals’ arrival in Alice Springs on 21 March 1983 stated that the Princess of Wales “stood holding Prince William with something less than a smile on her face. She seemed uneasy, even glum, and looked at the tarmac with downcast eyes throughout much of the brief airport picture session.”

In the episode, Charles’s jokes to the press fall flat, and Diana makes a gaffe referring to Ayres ‘Dock’, leading prime minister Hawke to see an opportunity to cut Australia “free” of the monarchy. In reality, some of Charles’s less-tactful remarks did make headlines, one notably in Sydney: the Prince of Wales upset animal lovers when he joked during a speech that Prince William was being given “warm milk and minced kangaroo”. In The Crown the Queen says trip was always designed to be Charles’s tour, and Philip bemoans the fact that his wife sent the “B team” for something so important, putting the tour’s objective in peril.

Later in the episode, Diana and Charles appear distant and divided – in reality, royal press officers assured reporters and photographers that any signs of distress were due to jet-lag and adapting to the heat – and Charles continues to rely on Camilla as a close confidant (though both maintain there was nothing more between them than close friendship during this time). Yet things come to a head when Diana becomes insistent that the tour is paused so she can see William (who had been stationed in Woomargama with his nannies).

In reality, royal press officers assured reporters and photographers that any signs of distress were due to jet-lag and adapting to the heat

The royal tour of Australia was a challenging time for the young princess, who had suffered postpartum depression after William was born and was still battling an eating disorder . “I find I can't stop playing with him,” Diana had said at William’s first press conference in Australia, and she insisted that she and Charles should return to Woomargama to see him as much as possible.

This prioritisation of her child over royal duty, often viewed as a departure from royal protocol, would continue; Diana later shifted her official responsibilities so that her schedule matched that of her children as much as possible, and in her official calendar the princess had all the everyday details of her sons’ lives marked in green ink.

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A royal reconciliation?

The drama chooses to depict a confrontation between the couple behind closed doors at the sheep station, used as a touchstone for a number of issues facing them: the most prominent being Charles’s connection with “her” (Camilla). Though Charles insists that his relationship with Camilla remained platonic until his marriage had “irrevocably broken down”, the drama has Diana citing love letters, a photograph in Charles’s wallet, and the ‘G’ & ‘F’ bracelet . These are all real accusations levied by Diana in Andrew Morton’s biography, which also mentions the cufflinks that Charles wore on their honeymoon, engraved with two interwoven Cs. Charles reportedly dismissed Diana’s reaction to them, saying they were “a present from a friend”.

The gulf between Charles and Diana is emphasised, with both parties bemoaning the fact they feel misunderstood and unappreciated, and both saying they are in need of praise and encouragement – characteristics upon which many differing biographical views seem to agree. “How awful incompatibility is,” Charles wrote to one friend, according to Sally Bedell Smith’s 2017 biography of the prince. “How dreadfully destructive it can be for the players in this extraordinary drama.”

Yet as the pair reconnect, the drama emphasises how the couple’s children offered common, and often happy, ground. Describing this time with William and Diana in a letter to a friend, Charles said: “The great joy was that we were totally alone together,” and how he and his wife “laughed and laughed with sheer, hysterical pleasure” at William’s antics as a baby.

The drama depicts the strength of this reconciliation in Charles failing to return a phone call from Camilla. Stuart Higgins, an editor at The Sun who had a close friendship with Camilla in the 1980s, believes there was a definite “cessation” in her relationship with Charles and that Charles made an effort with Diana. But he also noted that there was no sense Camilla was ever “out of contact”. In Jonathan Dimbleby’s 1994 authorised biography, much was made of the fact that Charles and Camilla had “virtually no contact” between 1981 and 1986, but they still hunted together and mixed in the same circles during this time.

The start of ‘Dianamania’

Post-reconciliation, in The Crown Charles and Diana are seen to continue the tour, and as they greet crowds as a pair all seems well. Arthur Edwards, one photographer present on the tour, said: “They just looked at each other like they wanted to go and rip the clothes off each other. They were so much together and in love.” As shown in the drama, the couple did famously dance together at a charity ball in Sydney, and Charles “prided himself on his ballroom prowess”, writes Bedell Smith. Meanwhile, “the British press reported on how the royal pair were working to reinvigorate the historic ties of friendship and political unity that existed between the UK and Australia,” says Dr Ed Owens, a historian of the British monarchy.

“Diana proved a real hit with the Australian public and media,” Owens adds, “and was noted not only for her fashionable dress style, but also for the informal way she interacted with crowds by exercising her famous ‘common touch’.”

Yet as Charles and Diana take on separate engagements, it becomes clear that Diana is the real star – the 1983 tour is often regarded as the birth of ‘Dianamania’. “Hundreds of people fainted, flowers and flags were thrown at the couple, and police became seriously concerned about crowd surges. Police numbers were increased by 25 per cent,” the Telegraph reported, while in Melbourne the couple drew crowds of 200,000.

Before Diana, Charles had been the main draw. After one walkabout in California during his tour of the USA in 1977, writes Bedell Smith, his hands were “swollen to twice their size and covered in bloody cuts from the diamond rings of his fervent admirers who had grasped him so tightly.” Yet, once married to Diana, the picture changed. Though the prince often made light of the crowds’ preference for his young wife, says Penny Junor – he once “quipped that all he was good for these days was collecting flowers for his wife” – it was a new and uncomfortable experience for him. When crowds chanted for Diana, the prince said: “You will have to make do with me.”

The drama chooses Princess Anne to voice how the public’s preference for Diana will make Charles feel: “This was meant to be his grand debut, his moment in the sun, as future king,” she says. Her prediction is not wrong; “In those moments, the form of their public life together was set,” writes Bedell Smith. “Diana’s umbriferous presence disquieted Charles, a feeling that would soon become full-blown resentment.”

The final straw for Charles in The Crown comes when Bob Hawke makes clear that it is Diana, not the prince, who can claim credit for derailing his hopes of making Australia a republic. “No offence, but if it had just been you [on the tour] I might have got my wishes!” he jokes, before telling the prince “That superstar [Diana] may have just set back the cause of Republicanism in Australia for the foreseeable future.” True to history, the Telegraph reported that the couple’s popularity had set back the cause by “two decades”.

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A couple divided

In The Crown , upon their return to the UK, it becomes clear the tour has driven a wedge between Charles and Diana. They are seen going their separate ways – Diana to Kensington Palace, and Charles to his beloved Highgrove. Ed Owens says that “the private tensions that emerged during the tour took fuller form on the couple’s return to Britain, where the Prince of Wales (and other members of his family) expressed concerns about the way he, as next-in-line to the throne, was consistently outshone by his wife.”

Diana herself told Morton that though the tour was “basically a great success”, when crowds favoured her over Charles “he wasn’t used to that and nor was I. He took it out on me. He was jealous; I understood the jealousy but I couldn’t explain that I didn’t ask for it.”

The episode ends with Diana requesting an audience with the Queen, asking for the monarch’s support, telling her mother-in-law: “I don’t know who to turn to anymore.” While this meeting is further example of The Crown writer Peter Morgan speculating what happens behind closed palace doors, the Queen’s avoidance of overt emotional displays and confrontation, and Diana’s need for approval are certainly well-chronicled. In Morton’s biography, Diana said of the tour: “I was thrown in the deep end […] No one ever helped me at all. They’d be there to criticise me, but never there to say: ‘Well done’.”

The drama chooses this moment, with Diana splashed across the front pages of newspapers splayed over the Queen’s table, to show that Diana had a new and different understanding for what the public wanted from the royal family and of how to connect with the modern world. But the Queen dismisses Diana’s appeal for love and approval – a misjudgement that cuts Diana further adrift.

Diana later described the 1983 tour to Andrew Morton as a “make-or-break time for me” – a sentiment echoed at the end of the episode by the royal women gathered at Buckingham Palace. The Queen Mother’s brutal assessment that Diana will eventually “bend” under the pressure (or “break”, Princess Margaret quips) is testament to the increased isolation Diana felt.

But Diana returned from the tour, in her own words, “a different person… more grown up, more mature”. It seems the predictions of The Crown’s royal women may be off course.

Discover more real history behind The Crown here

NEXT EPISODE: The Crown S4 E7 real history: Princess Margaret’s decline and a royal secret revealed

Elinor Evans is deputy digital editor at HistoryExtra

With thanks to Penny Junor, royal biographer and author of 10 books on members of the royal family; and Dr Ed Owens, a historian of the modern British monarchy and author of The Family Firm: Monarchy, Mass Media and the British Public, 1932–53 (University of London Press, 2019)

Elinor Evans is digital editor of HistoryExtra.com. She commissions and writes history articles for the website, and regularly interviews historians for the award-winning HistoryExtra podcast

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A Look Back At Princess Diana’s First Royal Tour Of Australia

Thirty-five years ago, prince harry’s mother, diana, made her first overseas trip down under to visit ayres rock and bondi beach.

Amid the news Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are expecting their first child together, we imagine how Princess Diana would have reacted; overjoyed, overwhelmed, emotional. The statement would have read Harry’s mother was “delighted”, an adjective used by the Palace to describe every piece of good news.

Like every Royal story, there seems to be some sort of coincidental anniversary or some hidden milestone that gives it a whole new meaning. And Kensington Palace’s announcement that Markle is pregnant is not exempt: Thirty-five years ago, when Prince William was just a baby, Princess Diana and Prince Charles travelled to Australia for their first tour. The Royal couple – and William – spent 41 days travelling to Alice Springs and even dropped by Bondi Beach. It was Diana’s first overseas trip and she was just 22-years-old. It seems almost fitting then for a Royal baby announcement to happen, in our country, on this special anniversary.

On the other hand, it’s quite surreal to look back at this moment in time where Harry didn’t exist yet and Diana had no clue her life would be cut so short. While your timeline is filled with Royal Baby news, here’s a look back at Princess Diana’s time in Australia – her beautiful outfits, her grace and poise and the origins of those familial, caring values she passed onto her son, the Duke of Sussex.

topics: celebrity , Princess Diana , Meghan Markle , prince harry , royal tour , royal baby , Australia

Looking back at Princess Diana and Prince Charles' 1983 Australian tour, soon to be seen in The Crown

By Natalie Oliveri | 3 years ago

Australia's love affair with the British royal family is, undoubtedly, one of the strongest and most enduring throughout the Commonwealth.

It was strengthened like never before in 1983 when the new Prince and Princess of Wales embarked on their first joint tour Down Under, just two years after their fairy tale wedding .

But unbeknownst to adoring royal fans, the marriage was not a happy one and the six-week tour of Australia and New Zealand only moved to deepen the divide that had been growing between the Prince Charles and Diana.

The mammoth royal visit is the focus of episode six, Terra Nullis, of The Crown season four, which returns to Netflix this Sunday.

The highly anticipated season will see the introduction of Lady Diana and follows her engagement and royal wedding to the future king of England.

Set during the 1980s, it'll feature moments still fresh in the minds of many royal fans, including that 1983 tour.

Diana and Charles visited Australia three times together during their marriage. Prior to her engagement being announced, Diana holidayed in New South Wales, relishing her final months in relative anonymity. In 1996, Diana made her final visit here, but as a divorced woman and free from the constraints of royal life.

Here are some of the highlights from Diana and Charles's 1983 tour in Australia.

Prince William's first royal tour

When Charles and Diana visited Australia as husband and wife for the first time in 1983, they brought along their young son rather than leaving him with nannies at Kensington Palace.

Diana had insisted on bringing then-nine-month-old baby William with her and Charles, in a major break in royal protocol.

As the Royal Australian Air Force plane carrying the royals touched down on Australian soil in Alice Springs on a hot morning in March, William was given a very Aussie welcome when a blowfly landed on his head.

While posing for photographers on the tarmac, Prince Charles was heard saying: "Look, he's got a fly on him already".

Days later, Diana and Charles stood for photographers in front of Uluru – then known as Ayers Rock – at sunset for a photo that has become one of their most iconic, and was recreated by Prince William and Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, in 2014 during their first tour of Australia. They, too, brought along their young son – Prince George was also nine-months-old at the time.

The Prince and Princess of Wales also did what many tourists to the Top End did at the time, and climbed Uluru.

Diana talks about baby William

When speaking with children living in outback communities via the School of the Air radio, Diana was asked by one of the young participants about William's favourite toys.

"Um, Jamie, he loves his koala bear he's got, but he hasn't got anything particular, he just likes something with a bit of noise," Diana said.

The princess was also asked whether Prince William had a bicycle.

"He hasn't got one yet, I think he's a bit small… perhaps when he's your age and size we might get him one," she said.

The baby prince was left with his nannies at Woomargama, a sheep station near Albury, chosen because its location allowed his parents to fly back to him every night during that leg of the tour.

Hysteria at the Sydney Opera House

Diana cemented her popularity within the British royal family – and with her Australian fans – when she and Charles visited the Sydney Opera House, an appearance that saw thousands of people line the streets of the harbour foreshore and steps of the building to catch a glimpse of the couple.

People were hanging out of windows and office buildings as Diana and Charles drove by in an open-air car, the mass hysteria briefly taking its toll on Diana, who broke down in tears momentarily – something Charles apparently failed to notice.

When it came time to sing the Australian national anthem, a shy Di looked lost for words – but that only endeared her more to the public.

Her appearance in a flowing pink and white dress, and matching hat, that day remains one of her most enduring.

A fractured marriage

Prince Charles and Diana looked the picture of happiness when they took a turn on the dance floor at a gala dinner and dance at the Wentworth Hotel in Sydney.

Wearing a blue gown by Bruce Oldfield and her Collingwood peal earrings, Diana shone.

But as crowds turned out to see her at every public appearance, a jealousy was growing within Prince Charles for the attention Diana was receiving instead of him.

After all, the Australian tour was meant to show off the Prince of Wales as the next king — but the public had eyes for Diana only.

Diana's star power on show

The Princess of Wales was months away from her 22 nd birthday during the tour, and while she was relatively new at her royal role, her natural warmth and affinity with the public made her seem like a seasoned professional.

But Diana was never instructed how to behave in front of hordes of crowds, all while having to maintain an air of formality the British royals had been perfecting for decades.

"Traumatic," Diana later wrote of her first days in Australia, "the week I learned to be royal". 

With stops in Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra, Alice Springs, Sydney, Hobart and other small towns along the way, the royal tour saw constant pressure placed on both Diana and Charles.

Diana complained about having sore and red eyes nearly every night, while it's estimated the couple shook more than 2000 hands every day.

Endless engagements and fashion

The royal tour was also about official business and Diana and Charles were the guests of honour at many formal dinners, where they mingled with dignitaries and politicians.

The tour came at a time when the newly-elected Bob Hawke government had visions of an Australian republic on the horizon, with the Whitlam dismissal by the Queen's representative, Sir John Kerr, taking place just eight years earlier.

Her four weeks in Australia was also the first major look at Diana's fashion credentials and her every appearance was scrutinised and copied – something that hadn't really changed when it comes to royal women.

It was also an opportunity for the young princess to show off some of her most stunning and now-iconic jewels, many of which were gifted as wedding presents just two years earlier.

Diana mobbed by fans

Then-Victorian Labor premier John Cain wrote about the 1983 visit in his private diary, commenting on the huge crowds during Diana and Charles' visit to Cockatoo near Melbourne, where the community was still recovering from the Ash Wednesday bushfires in February.

"Astounding," Cain wrote. "People still respond to the mystery and aura and all the trappings that surround royalty."

He also commented about the tension brewing between Diana and Charles in the struggle for popularity.

"The prince did indicate to me in one of the several discussions we had that people responded more warmly to his wife that they did to him," Caine said. "He felt she was the subject of more attention and acceptance than he was."

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Prince Charles and Princess Diana's 1983 Australia Tour Marked the Fracturing Of Their Relationship

The Crown accurately depicts the jealousy lurking beneath the surface of the royal couple.

The Crown launches into Dianamania with the sixth episode of Season Four, as it follows Prince Charles and Diana on their 1983 royal tour of Australia and New Zealand. They embarked on their first overseas tour as a couple with young Prince William in March, and as the Netflix series shows, the tour launched Diana into superstardom and solidified Charles’ resentment of her. Here's how the actual tour compares to Peter Morgan’s adaptation in the episode entitled “Terra Nullius.”

However, the 21-year-old new mother was having a difficult time, as shown in the show—she was "jet-lagged, anxious and sick with bulimia," wrote Andrew Morton of the tour. We see Diana turn back mid-hike at Ayers Rock in Episode Six to Charles’ dismay, which did really happen. However, this was likely because of her impractical front-buttoned white dress and heels, per the Sydney Morning Herald . “When Charles coaxed her to climb part of the way up the rock, she hesitated, not through fear of slipping, but because she knew that coming down would expose her knees and petticoat to the world’s press,” they wrote of the incident.

Still, the tour was likely as rocky for Charles and Diana’s relationship as The Crown depicts. There are accounts of Diana crying at a public appearance outside the Sydney Opera House, which a photographer who was present, Ken Lennox, described in the documentary Inside the Crown: Secrets of the Royals , per Vanity Fair :

I’m about four feet from the princess and I’m trying to get a bit of the opera house in the background and some of the crowd, and Diana burst into tears and wept for a couple of minutes. Charles I don’t think has noticed [Diana crying] at that stage. If he has, typical of Prince Charles to look the other way.

While the show accurately depicts some moments that the couple seemed to be genuinely in love, such as their dance at a charity ball in Sydney, Charles’s jealousy of the mad adoring crowds over Diana did in fact amplify the wedge between the couple.

“The prince was embarrassed the crowds so clearly favored her over him,” wrote Sally Bedell Smith . “For her part, Diana was upset by the disproportionate interest in her, especially when she realized that it was disturbing Charles. She collapsed under the strain, weeping to her lady-in-waiting and secretly succumbing to bulimia. In letters to friends, Charles described his anguish over the impact ‘all this obsessed and crazed attention was having on his wife.’”

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In a 1995 interview with the BBC after their separation, Diana affirmed this herself. “We'd be going round Australia, for instance, and all you could hear was, ‘oh, she's on the other side.’ Now, if you're a man—like my husband—a proud man, you mind about that if you hear it every day for four weeks. You feel low about it, instead of feeling happy and sharing it,” she recalled. “With the media attention came a lot of jealousy. A great deal of complicated situations arose because of that.”

Charles and Diana’s royal tour did, however, have a powerful impact on the public opinion of the monarchy in Australia, as depicted in the episode. The popularity of the monarchy had been in decline in Australia in the '70s, and Republican Prime Minister Bob Hawke did not hide his stance that the country would be better off as an independent nation. While he may not have directly expressed this to Charles as he did in the episode, after the royal tour The Evening Standard stated that the public’s extreme fawning over Diana “ha[d] set Republicanism back 10 years.” And when, in 1999, the country held a referendum to vote on the possibility of becoming a republic, the people voted against it.

And the most crucial factual detail that The Crown snuck into the episode—Charles really did fall off that horse in the polo match.

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Warning: SPOILERS for The Crown Season 4, Episode 6 - "Terra Nullius"

The Crown season 4, season 6, "Terra Nullius" dramatizes Prince Charles (Josh O'Connor) and Princess Diana's (Emma Corrin) 1983 tour of Australia and New Zealand. While Netflix's award-winning historical series hits the main beats, key elements were changed or excluded to serve the dramatic needs of the episode. The real-life tour was indeed a huge success but impacted the Prince and Princess of Wales' already shaky two-year-old marriage.

Prince Charles and Princess Diana's anything-but-a-fairytale relationship began when the couple met in 1977. The future King of England was in the market for a suitable wife and under intense pressure from the royal family to find one, although his true heart's desire was (and remains) Camilla Parker-Bowles (Emerald Fennell), who was then married. Despite being 13 years younger than Charles, the beautiful and properly aristocratic Lady Diana Spencer checked all the boxes as an ideal future princess, and she won over the royal family during a 1980 visit to Balmoral Castle in Scotland. Despite only seeing each other 13 times by Diana's count, Charles did his "duty" and proposed to Diana at Windsor Castle in February 1981; the couple then made their engagement public later that month.

Related: The Crown: How Old Were Charles & Diana When They First Met

In the weeks leading up to their lavish July 29, 1981 wedding at St. Paul's Cathedral, Diana was hounded by the press and she moved into Clarence House to begin "princess training" at Buckingham Palace. The Crown depicts her isolation and lack of support from the royal family, especially Prince Charles who vanished on a tour for five weeks, and this began Diana's habitual self-harm and bulimia. Diana also began to learn the true scope of Charles and Camilla's secret relationship, but regardless, nothing could stop the fairytale wedding . Charles and Diana tied the knot and she became Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales.

The Crown season 4's first three episodes detail the first few years of Charles and Diana's relationship, but their intense troubles — and also their greatest moments together — truly began in episode 6, "Terra Nullius," when the couple embarked on their triumphant 6-week tour of Australia and New Zealand. "Terra Nullius" is arguably the best episode of The Crown, season 4, but here are the missing details and real-life events behind the Netflix series lush drama.

Diana Brought Prince William But The Crown Made It Controversial

In The Crown , Diana insists on bringing Prince William along because she can't bear to be apart from her baby son for six weeks and she argues that his mother's love is what will instill humanity in the heir that the royal nannies and courtiers can't give him. This is considered a breach of protocol and Queen Elizabeth II (Olivia Colman) herself argues that when she and Prince Philip (Tobias Menzies ) went to Australia in 1954, they left young Prince Charles and Princess Anne (Erin Doherty) behind for five months. "And you think that might have had consequences?" Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) countered, arguing Diana's point.

Diana got her wish in The Crown and Prince William went to Australia with them; the episode shows they were separated in the first leg of the tour but Diana insisted on the itinerary being changed so she and Charles could visit William at the sheep's farm he was staying at. However, in real life, Diana was prepared to leave William behind on the tour and not breach royal protocol. The change happened when former Australia prime minister Malcolm Fraser suggested that Charles and Diana bring Prince William along. The tour schedule was also not disrupted so that Diana could see William in real life, but she did tell the Australian press that Prince William loved his stuffed koala. Charles also enjoyed playing with William during the tour.

Related: The Crown's Heartbreaking Ending For Charles, Diana, And Thatcher Explained

The Hardships Of The Australian Tour The Crown Didn't Show

As in The Crown , when Prince Philip called Charles and Diana "the B-team" and said that Australia was too important to send "the understudy" instead of the Queen herself, the royal family did worry about how Diana would fare on the tour. As The Crown partly depicted, Prince Charles and Princess Diana arrived in Alice Springs, Australia on March 20, 1983, but, because of the torrential rains, the luxury accommodations they expected weren't available. Charles and Diana had to resort to staying at the only suites available at a motor hotel.

The early part of the tour had rough patches; sick and not being able to cope with the heat (an admittance that broke royal protocol), Diana wasn't able to climb Ayer's Rock (now called Uluru), while, in real life, Charles also made gaffes like joking that William was being fed "warm milk and minced kangaroo."  There were also other down points that The Crown didn't show, such as Diana publicly breaking down and crying in Sydney because of the overwhelming crowds. In the episode, the moment at the Sydney Opera House in front of a gigantic crowd was part of a montage of triumphant moments for Charles and Diana after their (fictional) conversation that temporarily patched up their relationship problems.

In real life, Charles did fall off his horse during a polo match and Diana did make a public appearance with a team of lifeguards at Terrigal Beach. The Crown didn't show Charles body surfing at Bondi Beach and how the powerful waves almost depantsed the Prince of Wales. However , The Crown did also accurately portray how Charles and Diana dazzled the crowds, such as when they danced together at a glamorous ball in Sydney. There were genuine moments when the Prince and Princess of Wales were in synergy that the Australian press and people adored, and it's estimated that Charles and Diana shook 2,000 hands a day.

Charles Became Jealous Of Diana

Diana's growing popularity and all of the attention lavished upon the Princess of Wales, who the Australian crowds saw as "down to earth" and "relatable," did affect Prince Charles. After all, Charles was supposed to be the focus of the tour and it was meant to be his first major outing as the future King of England. Instead, the crowds wherever they traveled went mad for Diana, and there were points when Charles was indeed booed and they insisted on seeing Diana instead, which hurt the Prince's feelings.

Related: The Crown Season 4 True Story: What Really Happened & What Changed

In real life, as in The Crown , Prince Charles was angered when he was giving a speech and the audience laughed at Diana, who Charles thought was "pulling faces" behind him. Charles did say "that's the thing with women, you never know what they're doing behind your back." However, while Charles was soured by Diana's reception compared to his own, the Prince of Wales also later recalled that the times he, Diana, and William were together in Australia were moments of "great joy."

Diana's Popularity Affected Australian Politics

The biggest change that underwent Diana was that by the conclusion of the Australia tour, Diana had become an international star. The Princess of Wales did ultimately affect the plans of new Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke (Richard Roxborough), who wanted to lead his country in breaking away from the Commonwealth. Hawke was a staunch Republican who was part of the growing anti-monarchy movement in Australia that had been building since the 1970s.

In The Crown , Hawke tells Prince Charles, "She's made us both look like chumps... No offense, but if it'd just been you, I'd have got my wishes. But then she comes along!"  While that conversation was fictionalized, in real life, Princess Diana was so beloved by Australia that it set the Republican cause back two decades. In 1999, when a referendum was held on Australia becoming a republic, the country voted "no," and this can be traced back to how Princess Diana won the hearts of Australia.

Next: The Crown: The Real Timeline Of Prince Charles And Princess Diana's Relationship

The Crown Season 4 is available to stream on Netflix.

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Prince Charles, Princess Diana, and the Sheep: How the Royals Transformed One Australian Country Town

During their 1983 royal tour, the Prince and Princess arranged for baby Prince William to stay at Woomargama Station, a working property in a small town. Decades later, locals remember their weeks-long brush with royalty.

Often, stories about royalty are dripping in diamonds and pearls, featuring celebrity cameos and (literal) palace intrigue. At times, Charles and Diana’s 1983 visit to Australia and New Zealand had that. But then they’d return to see baby William—whom Diana, famously, had insisted on bringing, breaking royal tradition—in Woomargama, the country town of 90-some residents where William and his nanny stayed for the duration of the trip.

Woomargama Station, located in the town of the same name, is a working property. At the time, it boasted around 2,000 sheep, 400 cattle, and one corgi named Bryn. The latter’s parents, Gordon and Margaret Darling, owned the station, and during the royals’ stay, they were asked to vacate their home base, the six-bedroom homestead they’d renovated about 15 years back and filled with modern Australian art. The people who got to stay were those like Ward, who worked the property, many of whom lived on the roughly 2,500-acre expanse.

Veronica Semmler’s parents also got to stay, as her father Colin was a station hand at the time. She and her brothers had grown up on the property, but at the time of the tour, she was boarding in Albury (the city the royals flew in and out of when visiting Woomargama), finishing her senior year of high school—and constantly ringing home to ask for updates.

It wasn’t just her. Semmler recalls crowds gathering by the side of the road in the hopes of glimpsing Charles and Diana as they arrived; like her, many of them could hardly believe their luck. “I remember when they said that they were coming it was like, ‘To Woomargama?’” Semmler says. “Why would they come to Woomargama?’”

Surely, the New South Wales village, described in Woman’s Day at the time as “a typical Australian country township—a pub, a couple of service stations, a general store/post office, a one-teacher primary school with 12 pupils, a church or two, and a rundown community hall,” was not the kind of place that regularly welcomed royalty. For Diana and country-loving Charles, though, the town and its station served as a comfortable and safe home base for William, within driving distance of an airport, and roughly in-between Sydney and Melbourne, so as not to appear to favor one over the other. As Mr. Darling told the press at the time, “It doesn’t favor any one.”

The Darlings have since passed away, but they collected articles published about the station in a special royal tour scrapbook, which Clare Cannon—their daughter, and the current owner of the station—was happy to share. The press clippings offer a glimpse of how the couple took the news of the royals' plans to stay at the station. They were "a little surprised but absolutely delighted" when the call came from the Prime Minister, despite their notable connections at home and abroad. (They counted UK foreign secretary Lord Carrington and Prince Philip's on-time aide, Mike Parker , among their friends, and had previously hosted Ronald Reagan, then the Governor of California; as Mr. Darling explained to the press, “We were close friends in Los Angeles.”)

However it was arranged, in the spring of 1983, the residents of Woomargama had their day-to-day lives turned upside down as the media besieged the town. The Woomargama Whisper suggested residents "be kind," and "Try not to tread on them, even though they may be crawling through the grass looking for a scoop photograph," but that wasn't so easy for Ward, who needed to keep the farm running amid all the madness. “My wife Dinah, she actually went up to the front gate and actually blocked the front entrance with the car so we didn’t have any other intrusions until they got security set up,” he says.

When security came, it came in force. Members of the New South Wales’ tactical response group were installed at the gate, and the airspace around the property was secured. A helicopter was placed at the ready near Ward’s window, per Diana’s request, as Ward remembers it. “Princess Diana actually stipulated she wasn’t going to tolerate any nonsense,” he says. “If there was any breach in security, they wanted out.” Thankfully, it was never needed—though Ward was once sent to investigate a suspected midnight intruder. The culprit? An old bottle reflecting the moonlight.

Meanwhile, the Darlings were preparing the homestead, the property’s main residence, for the royals’ arrival—including, as Mrs. Darling told the press, seeing to it that fresh flowers were placed in every room, and ensuring that the pantry was fully stocked. Semmler’s family on the other hand was worrying that all the new officials might take issue with her father’s unregistered motorbike (never fear, “he got to know all the security people there, and so he ended up just driving along the road and nothing happened,” Semmler says). There was also a big to-do about a baby cradle, specially made in nearby Wagga Wagga for the young Prince, which required a door or two to be taken off its hinges to get inside. And on top of it all, they were contending with a severe ongoing drought, hardly ideal for a farm’s operations.

At least one of their worries vanished when Prince Charles and Princess Diana arrived in the middle of a downpour. “We always said Princess Diana broke the drought,” Cannon said. “It was a big day.”

Even the Windsors couldn’t ignore the storm. “Prince Charles arrived at the homestead and he said, ‘This is the first time I have ever had to wear a mackintosh in Australia!’” Ward laughs. But Diana’s mind was elsewhere, he recalls fondly. “With a lovely sort of fringe she had and those bright eyes and a shy smile on her face, she said, ‘I must go and see little Wills.’ And she went to see little Wills.”

Aside from arrivals and departures, Charles and Diana mostly kept to themselves while they were on the property, which wasn’t that often anyway. For the most part, the Prince and Princess were busy jetsetting and glad-handing around the continent, leaving Woomargama with just the station staff, palace staff, and security staff—and of course, little Wills and the nanny, Barbara Barnes .

Ward remembers Barnes and Prince William being driven around the property every day, including around the “square,” where the manager’s and jackeroo’s homes were. “They’d come and they’d stop and you’d look at little Wills, and he’d smile,” Ward said, adding, “He just sat in his little car seat and he’d smile. He was a very happy little chap.” Semmler recalls hearing about these drives too—and that thereafter, her mother always called an off-road they’d taken “The Prince’s Highway.”

Cannon, who never met the Windsors during their stay, says the story goes that William took his first steps at the station. Ward doesn’t recall that, but assures the young Prince “certainly crawled on the carpets at least.”

When the couple was in town, though, it was hardly a restful break from their tour. Charles and Diana were still working to connect with the locals, even meeting with children from the town’s school. (One of the students “touched the Princess and she didn’t wash her hands for at least a week after,” as Ward remembers it.)

For her part, Cannon recalls hearing about Diana’s interaction with a particular, somewhat eccentric local. “There was an old lady there whose family had been in the village for generations, and she had all these little gnomes out in front [of her home]. And Princess Diana met her and said, ‘oh, I love all your gnomes,’” Cannon laughs. “You know, she was very polite.”

The real highlight for Woomargama residents was the couple's attendance at church service in nearby Halbrook, at the royal tour organizers’ suggestion. (The vicar was given the service program and the hymns by the Windsors’ staff, per Cannon.) That Sunday, the locals gathered outside St. Paul’s Anglican Church that Sunday to greet the couple. One of them, Wendy Geddes, remembers standing alongside her fellow Brownies, helping wave them in.Semmler, whose mother was on the church council, was able to return home and attend the service. “All I could really look at was Charles and Di, even though I could only see the back of their heads,” Semmler said. She added that Diana was beautiful, and Charles, who read a lesson for the congregation had a wonderful voice—“he could have read the entire Bible and I would’ve been happy”—but that most of all, she was shocked by how human they were. “I don’t know what you expect when royalty comes, but they’re so special and so amazing and so jaw-dropping, but they’ve got two arms, two legs, they’re a normal height, you know?”

For those weeks, Woomargama was at the center of a national story. Ward kept up with Charles and Diana’s travels every day by consulting their official itinerary and listening to the wires he’d been granted access to. Truckers passing by took to calling the town Windsor City. And then it was over.

“We were sort of, you know, country people who were just getting on with living, and just bringing up our children. And then all of the sudden we were a part of this world which was so different to what we were used to. It was really quite bizarre,” Semmler muses. “And then when they left, it was like, oh okay… It was like, for those weeks, we were somewhere so strange and unusual. And in a way, it was sort of magical.”

Traces of royalty remain. Woomargama souvenirs were made featuring the Prince and Princess of Wales, some of which Semmler and her family still have; a plaque was installed outside the church they visited; and the smokehouse that supplied Chalres and Diana with smoked trout still touts its ties to the Windsors. (Anthony Ainsworth, who took over the business a few years back, was shocked when the rumors of the royal connection were verified: “I thought, oh! It’s real, it’s true!”) But Ward says that he doubts many people in town even remember it. Many of them have since died, and others have moved away.

Cannon certainly hasn’t forgotten though—and neither has her parents’ esteemed guest. Decades later, her husband, who happens to be consul for Monaco, met the Prince of Wales at Prince Albert’s 2011 wedding. Did he remember Woomargama? “Oh, totally!” Cannon laughs. “He goes, ‘How’s all those sheep?’”

Chloe is a News Writer for Townandcountrymag.com , where she covers royal news, from the latest additions to Meghan Markle’s staff to Queen Elizabeth’s monochrome fashions ; she also writes about culture, often dissecting TV shows like The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and Killing Eve .

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The real story behind that photo of princess diana.

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Princess Diana’s and Prince Charles’s 1983 tour of Australia and New Zealand was supposed to show the young couple’s fairytale love story to the world. However, in one heartbreaking photo that has become infamous from this trip, we saw Diana clearly overwhelmed and breaking down in front of crowds. We take a look at the real story behind this distressing photo here.

The 1983 tour of Australia was Diana’s first overseas royal tour. Keep in mind that she was only 21 years old at the time and had just welcomed baby Prince William . Even if Diana had been experienced with royal tours, the 1983 tour was grueling by any standards . Although it was only four weeks long, the royal couple was set to cover 30,000 miles and make up to eight public appearances in one day.

During this tour, Prince Charles seemed to realize how much the public preferred his wife to him. This realization couldn’t have been easy for Charles’s ego, but also must have been extremely difficult for Diana. She realized there was nothing she could do to ease her husband’s jealousy or convince him she didn’t want to be in the spotlight.

In fact, at one point during the tour while in Sydney, Princess Diana broke down in tears during an official public appearance outside the Sydney Opera House. Ken Lennox, a royal photographer who accompanied the royal couple on their 1983 tour, captured the famous photo of Diana breaking down.

Lennox was trying to get a photograph with the Sydney Opera House in the background of his photos when he first realized something was wrong. “I’m about four feet from the princess and I’m trying to get a bit of the opera house in the background and some of the crowd, and Diana burst into tears and wept for a couple of minutes.” He went on to say that “Charles, I don’t think, had noticed [Diana crying] at that stage. If he has, typical of Prince Charles to look the other way!”

After seeing how upset Diana was, Lennox went to see the press officer for the prince and princess to tell them what he had witnessed. However, the press officer told Lennox that everything was fine and that the royal couple was just “experiencing jet lag and adapting to the heat.” At the time, Lennox accepted this as a valid reason for Diana’s tears, but he later realized that this was the first sign that something was really wrong with the royal couple’s relationship.

What the royal press officer said was partially true. According to biographer Andrew Morton’s book Diana: Her True Story In Her Own Words, she recalled, “there were thousands of press following us… It was hot, I was jet-lagged, being sick. I was too thin. The whole world was focusing on me every day.”

Diana told Andrew Morton that she would often come back from engagements on the Australian tour crying her eyes out. She would tell her lady-in-waiting that she has “got to go home. I can’t cope with this.”

Charles was clearly growing resentful that the public preferred Diana to him. In her biography on Prince Charles, author Sally Bedell Smith wrote that “the prince was embarrassed the crowds so clearly favored her over him.” However, from Diana’s perspective, she “was upset by the disproportionate interest in her, especially when she realized that it was disturbing Charles.” In fact, in private letters to his friends, Charles revealed that he was upset with all the “obsessed and crazed attention” his wife was receiving.

Diana confirmed Charles’ jealousy in a 1995 interview with the BBC. When recalling the attention she was getting during the 1983 royal tour, Diana said, “We’d be going around Australia, for instance, and all you could hear was, ‘oh, she’s on the other side.’ Now, if you’re a man- like my husband- a proud man, you mind about that if you hear it every day for four weeks. You feel low about it instead of feeling happy and sharing it.” Diana also revealed that “with the media attention came a lot of jealousy. A great deal of complicated situations arose because of that.”

More from us: The Unhappy Royal Couple ”“ Charles and Diana’s Loveless Marriage

In some ways, the 1983 royal tour was the beginning of the end of Diana and Charles’s marriage, and the photo of Diana breaking down confirms the strains that emerged.

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'The Crown' : How Princess Diana and Prince Charles' Australia Tour Predicted Their Doomed Marriage

Princess Diana and Prince Charles first overseas trip help launch the new princess into international stardom — and prompted Prince Charles' jealousy

Stephanie Petit is a Royals Editor, Writer and Reporter at PEOPLE.

Princess Diana and Prince Charles ' first overseas trip help launch the new princess into international stardom — and prompted Prince Charles' jealousy over his wife's popularity.

Season four of The Crown , now streaming on Netflix, tackles the couple's 1983 tour of Australia in the episode "Terra Nullius" — and the importance of keeping the country in the Commonwealth.

Tensions between Diana (played by Emma Corrin) and Charles (Josh O'Connor) began before the plane even touched down, according to the royal drama. Prince William , then just 9 months old, became the first royal baby to accompany his parents on a royal tour (a tradition since followed by William and Kate Middleton as well as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle with their own children .) In the show, it was Princess Diana who insisted they bring their son along — "no baby, no me."

The move to travel with their son warmed the hearts of Australians. "Bringing William was what made it really different. There was a huge amount made of Diana being a breath of fresh air and [so] modern. It was enormous," said Jane Connors, author of Royal Visits to Australia .

Early in the arduous six-week tour, Princess Diana — already battling bulimia — was portrayed in The Crown as weak from the Australian heat and jet lag. During a scene at Uluru, she leaves Charles to climb Ayers Rock without her after saying she felt "dizzy." However, she bounces back as the tour continues, dazzling all who see and meet her.

At first, the Prince of Wales is pleased by his wife's efforts and approval by the large crowds who came to see them — but it's not long before he begins to feel like second fiddle.

During a speech, Prince Charles talks about how "lucky" he is to have Diana as a wife, only for Princess Diana to make a face and draw laughs from the crowd. "That's the thing about ladies: you never quite know what they get up to when your back's turned," he remarks.

The Crown shows the couple getting into a fight over Charles' embarrassment.

"This was supposed to be my tour! My tour as Prince of Wales to shore up a key country in the Commonwealth at a very delicate moment politically," O'Connor’s Charles erupts at Corrin's Diana. "Thanks to you, people are laughing in my face."

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The real-life Princess Diana spoke about upstaging her husband and his jealousy during her famous 1995 interview with BBC1's Panorama.

"We'd be going 'round Australia, for instance, and all you could hear was, 'Oh, she's on the other side.' Now, if you're a man — like my husband — a proud man, you mind about that if you hear it every day for four weeks. You feel low about it, instead of feeling happy and sharing it," she said.

Host Martin Bashir clarified that the public was expressing a "preference" for Diana over her husband.

"Yes, which I felt very uncomfortable with, and I felt it was unfair because I wanted to share," she said.

Diana added, "With the media attention came a lot of jealousy. A great deal of complicated situations arose because of that."

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