Editorial: West Australians cherished the chance to pay their respects to the Queen on her seven visits

The Queen was the first reigning monarch to visit Australia, making seven trips to WA between 1954 and 2011. A visit from Queen Elizabeth II was always a joyous time. The Queen was the first reigning monarch to visit Australia, making 16 trips throughout her reign, including seven to WA between 1954 and 2011. Each shared a common mood of community celebration, welcome and an uplifting of national and State pride. Her first visit to WA in 1954 was certainly one to remember, the height of the polio epidemic preventing crowds from physically interacting with the Queen, forced instead to watch from afar — but they were no less enthusiastic. The West Australian reported that a crowd estimated at more than 100,000 lined the streets for a glimpse of the Queen and Prince Philip. The Queen’s second visit in 1963 took her to the far north of the State for the first time. The monarch would not return to WA for another 14 years, until her Silver Jubilee tour of 1977 — just two years after the Constitutional crisis of 1975 when the Whitlam government had been dismissed by governor-general Sir John Kerr. Yet The West noted in an editorial that she would arrive in WA “not as a remote monarch to whom homage is due but as an old friend.” And even the Queen remarked on the growing debate about the nation’s future, saying she had detected “a new air of self-confidence” in Australia, and of protests about the Whitlam dismissal, “that is what freedom of expression is all about.” The Queen’s 1981 visit came amid the excitement over the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, and in 1988 the ongoing affection of West Australians emerged again when sections of the crowd at a garden party at Government House on the Queen’s 62nd birthday burst into singing Happy Birthday. The Queen’s sixth visit in 2000 came just a year after Australians had been asked to vote in a referendum on whether the nation should become a republic — which had been defeated, knocking the debate on to the backburner. And yet the Queen herself revisited the issue on her arrival in Sydney, saying Australia should look forward as well as back, and that the future of the monarchy in Australia was an issue for Australians. The Queen’s seventh visit to WA in 2011 saw big crowds pay their respects, perhaps amid a feeling that the passage of time was finally catching up with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh — and that it was likely to be their last visit to the State. The formal part of the visit was the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, but the visit drew to a close with a massive show of affection at the suitably WA-themed Big Aussie Barbecue. Indeed the visit did turn out to be the last time West Australians were able to catch a glimpse of the monarch. But over seven visits across 57 years — which we feature in special coverage on Monday — hundreds of thousands of West Australians were able to say “I saw the Queen.” And for each, it was surely an unforgettable moment to be cherished. Responsibility for the editorial comment is taken by WAN Editor-In-Chief Anthony De Ceglie