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“It was very moving, I thought that was a really personal – a very human sort of moment,” he said.
Hurley attended the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June last year before returning for the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
He flew with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to the state funeral in September, meeting the King, William and his wife Catherine, the Princess of Wales.
Having previously served in a vice regal role as NSW governor before his appointment to Yarralumla in 2019, Hurley has come to know both men well, and said he was confident the monarchy remained in good hands.
“It’s been said quite a number of times, but it’s about service,” he said.
“I think the driving thing during the King’s reign will be volunteerism – this is service. And you could see writ large through that whole service, there is authority, and with authority becomes power, and with power becomes responsibility and with responsibility – and a very important part of that responsibility is service. And I think that’s sort of one of the big themes that ran through the whole of that two-hour ceremony.
He said he had spoken briefly to the King during a lunch earlier in the week when, despite the distractions of the coronation, he was “very engaged with what we’re up to in Australia”.
“He was very interested in the upcoming referendum, and he knew how the economy’s going – those sorts of things. So, he was very keen to just chat about that,” Hurley said.
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The Hurleys visited Greece ahead of the coronation, the first time that an Australian head of state had travelled there in an official capacity in more than 20 years.
He stopped in Lemnos, a small island in the northern Aegean Sea, where Greece and Australia are creating a Remembrance Trail in honour of the Anzac troops killed in the First World War.
Hurley also praised Australia’s historically close ties with the country, as well as the significant contribution of the Greek diaspora to the nation, during meetings with Greece’s highest state and political officials in Athens.
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