Australia -- Description and travel; New Zealand -- Description and travel; Windsor, Edward, Duke of, 1894-1972
The whole was an experience which can never be forgotten by any of those
who had the good fortune to be there. The popular reception in the
town-hall was especially impressive. Here, standing on the dais in the
centre of this fine building, the Lord Mayor of Sydney alongside, and a
number of ministers, judges and soldiers, grouped about him, the Prince,
in plain grey jacket suit and soft brown hat, received the salutes of a
great multitude of men, women and children--the blind man led by
friends, the old lady who must see the Prince before she died, the baby
who would be able to say in years to come that it was present. The
people were shepherded past by members of the local police, for whose
patience and courtesy it is impossible to express too great admiration,
in one long, smiling, curtsying, hat-doffing stream. Numerous barriers
had been erected, but there was no crushing whatever. It was a
demonstration of orderliness and public spirit of the very best.
Another picturesque function was where, under the twinkling pendants of
the big chandeliers in the ballroom of Sydney's Government House,
beneath the portrait of his ancestor George III, and before a brilliant
assemblage of naval and military officers, judges, ministers, civic
authorities, and members of consular bodies, the Prince shook hands with
several hundreds of representative men belonging to all sections and
communities of the Australian continent. Interesting also was the day he
spent amongst the young folk. It began with a visit to the Sydney
Cricket-Ground where twelve thousand children of the local Government
primary schools, headed by Mr. Mutch, Minister for Education, Mr. Board,
Director of Education, and Colonel Strong, Chairman of the Executive
Committee, organized and supervised a picturesque exhibition of physical
drill. The children deployed upon the grass in the centre, where they
went through evolutions and exercises, and arranged themselves so as to
form patriotic emblems and messages of welcome. Fifty thousand parents
and relations occupied gigantic stands around the ground and added a
bass to the treble of the children's cheering.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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