Queen Elizabeth II died today.
Fri, 9. September 2022
Today, we are all Elizabethans.
She was endearing to us all and active right to the end:
Just two days before her death the Queen swore in Prime Minister Liz Truss
My first twenty-five years were spent in England and some of my earliest memories are of the family photographs of her with her consort Prince Phillip and their first two children, Charles and Anne. In 1952 I remember the shock when it was announced that King George VI had died suddenly. I was six.
The next year I watched her joyous coronation ceremony on my next door neighbour's black and white television. All the children at my primary school were presented with a commemoration book, I still have mine (somewhere...) and a cardboard periscope for those whose parents would take them into London to line the parade route.
I came to Australia and she was popular here too. Some would say it was her charm, others would say it was her personality. For me, looking back, it was her neutrality and her dignity. Throughout her life she remained above politics, which I found both unique and inspiring.
The Second Elizabethan era was a period of tumultuous change but she remained a constant. Yet despite this, living here in Sydney for the last fifty-two years of her seventy year reign, I have for a long time believed that the pomp and ceremony that is the British Royal Family no longer fits the Australian way. Australia should cut its ties with the Monarchy and I hope this occurs within the next five years.
Of course, I never met the Queen but I can boast two close "encounters".
In the early sixties, I attended East Hertfordshire Technical College at Turnford once a week. Our classroom overlooked the railway line about fifty metres across an open field. One of my fellow students worked for British Rail and one afternoon he announced to the class that in a few minutes the Queen would be heading past along the line towards London. He was right and we watched the Queen's train as it passed by, some 50-80 metres away.
This was East Hertfordshire College of Further Education, which I attended 1961-1964. It seems to have been renamed and rebuilt and has shrunk, with land surrendered to five rows of housing near the railway. My classroom would have been somewhere in the middle of that residential area.
The other occasion was at the World Cup Final at Wembley in 1966, when England beat Germany 4-2.
I stood on the terraces above the players tunnel and snapped this image at the exact moment that Queen Elizabeth handed the Jules Rimet World Cup Trophy to England's captain, Bobby Moore. I would have been standing about 130 metres away and this is a cropped image:
Can't see her? In those days the Queen presented the trophy up in the stand. You can see the players walkway in front of the Royal Box and the Queen wearing a light coloured coat, with the England captain slightly to her right, wearing a red shirt (number 6) with white shorts.
Here is the exact same moment, captured by someone else who was standing somewhat closer than I was:
That was the only occasion I ever saw Queen Elizabeth in person.
She will be missed.