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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 Tatiana Dias

By Kiana Murden

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.

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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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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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Charles Described 1983 Royal Tour of Australia with Diana as 'Great Joy'

How real life compares to what the 'The Crown' shows in episode 6, 'Terra Nullius.'

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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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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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Prince Charles and Princess Diana in Australia: True story of the tumultuous tour depicted in The Crown

Princess diana's stardom as the 'fairytale princess' dwarfed prince charles during the infamous tour, two years into their short-lived marriage.

The tour of Australia by Princess Diana and Prince Charles was a defining moment for their marriage and the monarchy, as it is in The Crown . 

It was clear to the tens of thousands of spectators – and the wider world who were watching on through paparazzi cameras – that the princess’s stardom had far eclipsed that of the future king’s.

No surprise, then, that The Crown writer Peter Morgan goes to town in episode six by depicting this royal engagement as a tipping point in Diana’s inexorable rise into the hearts of the public.

Here’s the true story behind that spring 1983 tour. 

Was there tension between Charles and Diana during their tour of Australia?

In the Netflix show, the tour gets off to a clumsy start as Charles (Josh O’Connor) and Diana (Emma Corrin) are both awkward in front of the cameras and torn in private. 

This does reflect the couple’s rocky start in real life, with Charles making a number of gaffes that did not wash well with the crowds down under. 

It is also true that Diana was caught on film making an awkward facial expression when Charles talks about marrying her, something which led him to remark, “It’s amazing what ladies do when your back is turned”. Charles also embarrassingly fell off his horse playing polo as he tried to impress onlookers – a stark contrast to Diana’s seemingly effortless charm. 

The Queen’s ‘hidden’ cousins: True story of Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, depicted in The Crown

Behind closed doors, Peter Morgan employs artistic licence to dramatise the tension between Charles and Diana that many could sense would turn into an explosive showdown – but this is not thought to be an accurate representation of events.

It is clear that Diana was unhappy and uncomfortable in real life. “It was hot, I was jet-lagged, being sick,” she recalls of the Alice Springs trip in the famous Andrew Morton biography Diana: Her True Story – In Her Own Words . 

She added, “I was too thin,” a reference to her bulimia which was well known to The Firm at that time and visible when she danced with Charles at the Sheraton Wentworth, Sydney, in March 1983. 

Diana was also pictured weeping on the tour during a public appearance outside the Sydney Opera House. Ken Lennox, the photographer who captured the striking image, told 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 had noticed [Diana crying] at that stage. If he has, typical of Prince Charles to look the other way.”

Where is The Crown season 4 filmed? Filming locations for Buckingham Palace and Balmoral in the Netflix series

In his 1992 biography, which Diana reportedly supplied much of the material for, Morton located jealousy as the source of the couple’s tension, two years into their marriage. 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,” he wrote. 

“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.”

Was there a row about Charles and Diana bringing Prince William to Australia?

The Crown escalates the issue of bringing a very young Prince William on the tour into a row that did not really exist. 

In the show, Diana refuses to leave behind her nine-month-old son, in defiance of royal protocol which says two heirs should not travel together on the same trip to secure the line of succession. As now, Charles was first in line to the throne, and William second. 

Morton says in his biography that in fact Diana was “all ready to leave William. I accepted that as part of duty, albeit it wasn’t going to be easy”.

And contrary to Diana bolting to see William and berating courtiers in the episode, the biography recalls a more consensual set of affairs. “We didn’t see very much of him [William], but at least we were under the same sky, so to speak”. 

Did Charles and Diana’s visit stop Australia from abolishing the monarchy?

The Crown also depicts Charles and Diana’s visit as having major political implications, with then prime minister Bob Hawke forced to scrap his plan to campaign to remove Australia’s Commonwealth rule. 

The “Dianamania” of the fairytale princess has simply bedazzled too many Australians for such a move, which would have proved politically disastrous, the show suggests.

“She’s made us both look like chumps,” newly-elected Hawke tells Charles in the show. “No offence, but if it’d just been you, I’d have got my wishes. But then she comes along!”

There is no evidence of this conversation taking place, but Diana’s visit did seem to boost the previously declining Australian public support for the monarchy. Ultimately, 37 years later, Queen Elizabeth II is still queen of Australia.

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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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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 Australia tour – Everything you need to know about what really happened

The royal couple's 1983 tour of Australia and New Zealand drew huge crowds.

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In season four of The Crown , we see Prince Charles and Princess Diana embark on their landmark royal tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1983, marking the 22-year-old princess' first ever overseas trip.

In The Crown, the tour also marks Prince William's first overseas public appearance, after his mother Diana (played by Emma Corrin in The Crown cast ) breaks with royal tradition and insists on bringing him to Australia.

The tour was a resounding success, but as we see in the Netflix royal biopic, the beginnings of "Dianamania" are firmly established - causing Diana's husband Prince Charles to become jealous of her success and popularity, according to the Princess herself.

But what was the real-life story behind the 1983 Australia tour, and was Prince Charles actually jealous of his wife Diana?

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Did Princess Diana bring Prince William to Australia?

Yes, a nine-month-old Prince William accompanied his parents on their royal six-week tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1983. Diana is said to have refused to leave her infant son behind.

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Upon arrival in Alice Springs, Australia, Prince William (affectionally dubbed "Billy the Kid" by Australians) was carried down the steps of the Royal Australia Air Force Boeing 707 by his nanny, Barbara Barnes. The family posed for photographers before Barnes whisked William away to the couple's base at the farm in Woomargama, Albury, where Charles and Diana planned to rejoin him the following day.

The couple's press secretary Victor Chapman told the press: "I heard Prince William cry only twice in 30 hours [during the flight]."

Prince William's arrival at Woomargama coincided with the first rain the area had seen in four years, supporting the stereotype that royals have a knack of brining on rain, as press pointed out.

The decision to bring William represented a marked break with tradition, contrasting with the Queen's visit to Australia in 1954.

"The Queen would never travel with Charles in case they both went down, and Charles was not supposed to travel with his new son," said Jane Connors, author of Royal Visits to Australia. "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" (via Guardian News ).

The move paid off; Australians admired the royal couple, "particularly since they brought Prince William with them" (via The Times, April 1983).

Was the royal tour in Australia a success?

"The Princess who won the heart of Australia," ran The Times headline in April 1983, hailing the tour as "an unqualified success, due in large part to the Princess" - the tour saw "Dianamania" sweep across Australia and New Zealand.

The couple attracted crowds of thousands; in Melbourne, for example, an estimated 200,000 people gathered to see the couple when Prince Charles officially opened the Bourke Street Mall. It was also estimated that the couple shook hands 2,000 times a day across the six-week tour.

Melbourne Herald, the country's largest circulation evening newspaper at the time, ran a cartoon showing a map of Australia with a heart and the words "Princess Diana" superimposed on top. The caption read: "A permanent imprint!"

The tour's success and crowd turnout was compared to Queen Elizabeth II's eight-week tour in 1954. The then 27-year-old monarch and her husband Prince Philip arrived in Sydney Harbour and caused the city to grind to a halt. (The couple did not bring with them the five-year-old Prince Charles or three-year-old Princess Anne with them.)

Did Prince Charles become jealous of Princess Diana?

During the Wales' tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1983, Diana's global popularity became apparent to everyone, including her husband Prince Charles. "The crowds... turned out to see the royal couple, mainly the Princess," wrote one The Times reporter in Melbourne.

As seen in The Crown, spectators would arrive hoping to see Diana - and would bemoan their bad luck if they were on the 'wrong side' of the couple's car or walkabout.

"Everyone always said when we were in the car, 'Oh, we're on the wrong side, we want to see her, we don't want to see him' … and obviously he wasn't used to that and nor was I. How took it out on me. He was jealous," Diana said in an interview for Andrew Morton's biography. She continued: "I understood the jealousy, but I couldn't explain that I didn't ask for it."

Australian politician John Cain later said: "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. He felt she was the subject of more attention and acceptance than he was."

"I've come to the conclusion that it really would have been far easier to have two wives, to have covered both sides of the street," Charles famously said of his wife's popularity. Speaking during a state banquet hosted by then President Moo-hyun in Seoul, he continued: "I could have walked down the middle, directing the operation."

In Netflix's The Crown, Princess Anne warns the Queen: "You and I both know how much Charles craves reassurance, and attention, and praise. This tour of Australia and New Zealand was supposed to be his grand debut, his moment in the sun."

Did the Australian Prime Minister call the Queen a 'pig in pearls'?

In The Crown season four, Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke (played by Richard Roxburgh) appears on a talk show ahead of his election, and expresses his desire for an Australian head of state, adding that while he respects the Queen, the British royal family are a "different breed". The character then quips on the Netflix series: "You wouldn't put a pig in charge of a herd of prime beef cattle, even if it did look good in a twinset and pearls."

There's no online archival record of Hawke making those exact remarks, but he did indeed call Prince Charles a "nice enough bloke".

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Hawke's republican views were well known, and despite the success of Charles and Diana's tour, his party Labour still reduced Australia's ties with Britain by, for example, removing the veto power London previously had over state governors, and scrapping the imperial honours system.

Hawke also scrapped God Save the Queen as the nation's anthem, replacing it with Advance Australia Fair.

The Crown season four is released on 15th November. Looking for something else to watch? Check out our guide to the best series on Netflix and best movies on Netflix , or visit our TV Guide .

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Screen Rant

The crown: charles & diana's australia tour true story & all changes.

The Crown season 4's 6th episode depicts the highs and lows of Charles and Diana's 1983 Australia tour. But here's what The Crown changed and omitted.

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.

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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The Crown's fourth season: Charles and Diana tour Australia in festival of nostalgia

In the new episodes, which land on 15 November, we revisit the 1983 trip that marked the global rise of the ‘people’s princess’ – and the beginning of the end of her marriage

If following the universe’s most stressful election wasn’t your thing, there is another blockbuster event involving a dynastic family to get involved in this week: the return of The Crown .

Three official teasers and trailers of season four have been forensically dissected, while shots of the shoot were gobbled up more than a year ago . This is in part because this season focuses on the 1980s, a time many of its core viewing demographic remember well; and in part because this season features the looming figure of Margaret Thatcher, played brilliantly by Gillian Anderson.

But mostly, it comes down to the anticipation of seeing Emma Corrin as the young Diana. And while the series continues to revolve around the life of Queen Elizabeth, in this season – which lands on 15 November – she’s eclipsed by Diana. On Netflix , as in real life.

The Crown is not a documentary, of course: it’s the fictionalisation of what feels like the world’s longest running soap opera, compressed and magnified for maximum drama.

And this season – The Windsors: Dynasty edition – has it all: the drama behind the royal engagement and that unforgettable wedding in 1981; the revelations of some disturbing Windsor family secrets; conflict between the Queen and Thatcher, and the brutal implications on British society – and the world – as Thatcherism unfolds.

But if you’re after the really good stuff, skip ahead to episode six, Terra Nullis, which focuses on Charles and Diana’s 1983 six-week tour of Australia and New Zealand.

It was a pivotal moment in real life, just as in the series. For the royals, the tour was to be all about Charles as heir apparent in a Commonwealth country with which he had strong links , and a show of strength to Australians who had begun to question the need for a monarchy. The Whitlam dismissal by the Queen’s representative, Sir John Kerr, had taken place eight years earlier ( a move Charles had privately endorsed ), and the then recently elected prime minister, Bob Hawke, was pushing for a republic.

For the couple, it was their first official overseas tour together. They’d been married for two years, baby Prince William was on his first public outing (at Diana’s insistence, and against royal protocol), and the strain between them had well and truly set in.

For Australians who were there for it, episode six is great nostalgia. See the royal couple wilting in the Northern Territory heat; mobbed by crowds in Brisbane, and at the Sydney Opera House; joking around at a charity dinner in Tasmania. Spot Diana’s iconic 80s outfits and recall the bullish Hawke – played by veteran Hawke actor Richard Roxburgh with collar-tugging, smirking gusto – scoffing at their appeal.

It’s also a sweet reminder that this couple were once enamoured with each other – when he twirled her awkwardly across the dance floor at a charity ball at the Sheraton Wentworth Hotel , when they held hands and laughed happily together in public, against an Australian backdrop. Things might have been fraying behind the scenes, but it’s lovely to remember that on this tour they were the dream team trying to make it work while letting us indulge in our happily ever after fantasies. Before the carefully spun fairytale was dashed, and reality tragically intervened.

As the episode shows, the 1983 Australian tour was the making of the then 21-year-old Diana: a demonstration of her star power, as well as her own realisation of that strength. This was apparently a surprise for the other royals, not least Charles who was both proud and perplexed when he realised that his wife was outshining him. According to Tina Brown’s The Diana Chronicles, when Charles turned up to a tour function alone, he told crowds: “It’s not fair is it? You’d better ask for your money back!” Even Hawke realised he would have to shelve his republican plans when he saw the Australian public’s devotion to Diana.

It also shows that the seeds of destruction of their marriage had already taken root: Prince Charles’ much reported jealousy at being eclipsed by his young wife, the heartless way he treated her as she struggled, and their mismatch as a couple. We see the immense pressure Diana was under to live up to the public’s image of her as “a fairytale princess”, and the toll this took on her mental health and in her battle with bulimia, the illness that she would later help to de-stigmatise by speaking out about it.

So come for the drama, the 80s fashion, the recreation of so many unforgettable moments – but stay for the reminder that no one really knows what’s going on behind closed doors for public figures, that scrutiny takes its toll, and that ultimately fairytales are complete nonsense.

The Crown’s fourth season arrives on Netflix on Sunday 15 November. The Guardian’s full review will run Sunday in the UK, Monday in Australia.

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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

Princess Diana and Prince Charles's 1983 Tour of Australia Will Appear in The Crown Season 4

Last year, the cast was spotted filming a scene which recreated the royal couple's famous visit to Ayers Rock.

Although they were actually shooting in Almería, Spain, the duo were sporting costumes designed to mimic the white dress and beige outfit that Charles and Diana were photographed in during their tour.

On that day in 1983, the royal couple were visiting Australia's Ayers Rock (now called Uluru). It was a part of a month-and-a-half tour of the Commonwealth country—famously, the first time that Princess Diana, then 22 years old, had traveled overseas.

It was also the first tour Prince William, then just nine months old, was taken on. Diana had allegedly refused to leave him behind , even though it had been standard practice for royals to leave their children in others' care while embarking on such trips.

William's presence would establish a new normal, one that Prince William and Kate Middleton would later follow, bringing Prince George on their 2014 tour of New Zealand and Australia when he was less than a year old. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle recently followed suit, bringing months-old baby Archie on their royal tour of southern Africa.

Prince Charles and Princess Diana's 1983 trip certainly has plenty of material to mine for an episode of The Crown . And recently, preview photos for season four have offered a first look at what the show's depiction of the tour might look like, as they feature actress Emma Corrin wearing recreations of some of Diana's well-known looks from the tour. Check those out below.

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 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."

Can't get enough of PEOPLE 's Royals coverage? Sign up for our free Royals newsletter to get the latest updates on Kate Middleton , Meghan Markle and more!

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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Australia concerts in 2024: here’s a list of shows and tours coming up

Artists touring Down Under in 2024 include Coldplay, Pearl Jam, Hozier, Laufey, aespa, IVE and more

Fresh out of a pandemic, Australia’s 2023 touring calendar was one of the busiest in recent memory, as artists of all stripes took centrestage everywhere from stadium shows to intimate local gigs. With a starry schedule that included the likes of Post Malone , Red Hot Chili Peppers , and Mötley Crüe , it’ll be tricky for 2024’s schedule to outdo its predecessor – and yet, thanks to the likes of Taylor Swift , Blink-182 and Pink , plus Coldplay, Pearl Jam and SZA, it’s poised to do just that.

From debut headline shows for breakout artists to bustling festival sideshow programs, there’s something for everyone to enjoy as a stellar batch of musicians make their way Down Under in 2024. Read on for NME’s roundup of all the biggest concerts and tours coming to Australia this year.

Here are the concerts and tours coming to Australia in 2024:

James Taylor: An Evening with James Taylor & His All-Star Band When: April 12 – April 28 Find tickets and more info here

If there was ever a festival made for James Taylor & His All-Star Band at this juncture of his 50-year career, it’s Day on the Green . The singer will perform at wineries in Queensland (Sirromet Wines in Mount Cotton), and New South Wales (Bimbadgen in the Hunter Valley, and Centennial Vineyards in Bowral) across April 2024. Taylor will be accompanied by Aussie pair Josh Pyke and Ella Hooper .

Taylor is also playing his own headline shows. After selling out dates in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney, new shows have been added in those cities. A Live Nation pre-sale begins February 9 while general on-sale starts February 12.

Chase & Status When: April 19 – April 28 Find more info and ticket waitlists here

After a new mixtape, charting singles and landmark Boiler Room set, drum’n’bass lifers Chase & Status celebrated a huge 2023. This year, the British duo will bring the party to Australia and New Zealand on a sold-out co-headlining tour with Australia’s very own Luude. They’re notably playing RAC Arena in Perth, on top of Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane.

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SZA When: April 19 – May 2 Find tickets and more info here

Fresh off winning three Grammys, SZA has announced a tour of Australia and New Zealand this April. The ‘Kill Bill’ singer will be performing two shows in New Zealand and eight across Australia, with shows confirmed for Auckland, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Beth Orton When: April 24 – April 30 Find tickets and more info

Initially slated to appear in Australia in November 2023, Beth Orton  rescheduled her Australian tour to April 2024 and added an extra show in Tasmania. The folk musician will now embark on a four-date run with performances in Melbourne, Hobart, Sydney and Brisbane from April 24 to April 30, with tickets for the original cities still valid for the rescheduled dates. Tickets for the additional date at Hobart’s Odeon Theatre are accessible here.

Nick Cave (solo) When: April 25 – May 7 Find tickets and more info

The legendary Nick Cave embarks on a solo tour of Australia (read: without the Bad Seeds) this April, playing two shows in Melbourne and five in Sydney. Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood will be on bass duties for these shows at Plenary Melbourne and State Theatre Sydney, which are all sold out.

The Dandy Warhols When: April 25 – May 1 Find tickets and more info

The Dandy Warhols will make their return to Australia in April 2024 armed with their new album ‘Rockmaker’. So far, they’ve scheduled dates in Brisbane , Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. If you missed them when they toured down under with Hoodoo Gurus in 2022, this is your chance. Find tickets here.

Elephant Gym When: April 26 – April 28 Find more info and tickets here

Elephant Gym isn’t the result of a random band name generator; “elephant” refers to the Taiwanese math rock band’s bass-led grooves, while “Gym” denotes the “agility” of their rhythm. The trio will perform their technical and idiosyncratic instrumentals at three shows on the Australian east coast for the first time this April, supporting sleepmakeswaves.

6LACK: Since I Have A Lover Tour When: April 26 – May 1 Find tickets and more info

R&B favourite 6LACK (pronounced ‘black’) will return to Australia in April to tour his new album, ‘Since I Have A Lover’. The four-date jaunt will take him to Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth.

Niall Horan: ‘The Show’ Live On Tour When: April 26 – May 4 Find tickets and more info

Niall Horan will take ‘The Show’ on the road down under in 2024. The ex- One Direction member’s world tour comes in support of his third solo album ‘The Show’ , out June 9. For the Australian leg, he’ll perform arena shows in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Groovin The Moo sideshows When: April 29 – May 11 Find tickets and more info

Sadly, Groovin The Moo is no longer going ahead this year – but many of the artists who would have played the touring festival will still be forging ahead with their own Australian headline shows. Singer-songwriter Claire Rosinkranz, Wu-Tang Clan legend GZA (performing a set dubbed ‘Liquid Swords Live’) and Stephen Sanchez will all perform headline shows in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth.

Toronto indie rockers The Beaches will also perform their own dates, playing shows in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne in May. Find more information and tickets for all sideshows here .

Jessie Reyez When: April 30 – May 7 Find tickets and more info

Jessie Reyez will tour Australia for the first time in autumn, playing three shows along the east coast. The Canadian R&B singer will bring cuts from 2020 debut ‘Before Love Came to Kill Us’ and 2022 follow-up ‘Yessie’ to Sydney’s Enmore Theatre on April 30, before shows at the Forum in Melbourne and the Tivoli in Brisbane. Find tickets here .

Nothing But Thieves: Welcome To The DCC World Tour When: April 30 – May 7 Find tickets and more info

Nothing But Thieves cleaned up on a sold-out tour of Australia last year – and they’re back for more. The UK alt-rockers have announced the second Aussie leg of their Dead Club City World tour, which will kick off at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion on April 30, continue on to Brisbane and Melbourne, and wrap up at Hindley Street Music Hall in Adelaide on May 7.

Mahalia: In Real Life When: April 30 – May 8 Find tickets and more info

UK R&B artist Mahalia has booked a five-date tour of Australia, her biggest yet and her first time back down under since 2020. Audiences in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane should get ready for smooth tunes off her 2023 album ‘IRL’ .

• READ MORE: Mahalia on her emotional, empowering new record: “I didn’t think I would finish this album”

Jonas Brothers: Five Albums. One Night. Tour When: May 1 – 9 Find tickets and more info

Joe , Nick and Kevin Jonas – the Jonas Brothers – play Australia for the first time between May 1 and May 9 as part of their massive Five Albums. One Night. Tour. The tour will see the brothers perform hits from all five of their albums across one night, including fan favourites.

Tesseract When: May 2 – May 9 Find tickets and more info

UK prog metal outfit Tesseract are set to make the highly anticipated return to Australia in May 2024, marking their first shows Down Under since 2018. Between May 2 and May 9, the band will perform in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

With 2023 album ‘War of Being’ and songs from 2021’s ‘Portals’ not played in Australia yet, Tesseract are set to bring with them a fresh bounty of new music to Australia.

The Vaccines and Everything Everything Dates: May 4-11 Find tickets and more info here

UK indie rockers The Vaccines and Everything Everything are banding together for a co-headline tour of Australia, their first time back in the country since 2019 and 2018 respectively. Embrace the indie disco in May when they head to Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane and finally Sydney.

Sammy Virji When: May 10 – May 18 Find more info and tickets here

UK garage has been making a steady comeback, and DJ/producer Sammy Virji is one of its frontrunners. He’s set to come back to Australia for his biggest headline tour of the country yet. Virji will kick off his tour at Metro City in Perth on May 10, before heading through Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and finishing at The Roundhouse in Sydney May 18.

Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken Tour When: May 10 – May 17 Find tickets and more info here

Melissa Etheridge is bringing her trailblazing heartland rock to Australian shores for the first time in five years in May 2024. The ‘I’m Not Broken’ tour kicks off in Perth on May 10, before heading through Adelaide, Melbourne and finishing up in Sydney on May 17. Expect to hear a blend of the songwriter’s greatest hits as heard on her latest live album ‘Beautiful Day’.

Macklemore When: May 11 – May 20 Find tickets and more info

Fresh off the release of latest album ‘Ben’, Macklemore will embark on an Australian tour next May. The hip-hop artist will perform at Hordern Pavillion in Sydney on May 11-12, before taking to Melbourne’s John Cain Arena and Brisbane’s Riverstage on May 15 and May 17, respectively. Macklemore will perform at BASSINTHEGRASS in Darwin, and then conclude his Australian run at HBF Stadium in Perth on May 20. Find tickets here.

• READ MORE: Does Rock ‘N’ Roll Kill Braincells?! – Macklemore

Sleater-Kinney When: May 17 – May 23 Find tickets and more info

In their first shows here since 2016, Sleater-Kinney are embarking on a theatre tour of Australia. Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein will play four headline shows down under in support of their latest album, ‘Little Rope’ , in what the latter has called a “homecoming” of sorts.

• READ MORE: Sleater-Kinney talk new single ‘Untidy Creature’ and grief-driven new album: “This is not a somber record”

“For all intents and purposes, Sleater-Kinney got its start in Australia,” Brownstein said in a statement. “We recorded our first album and played our first ever shows there. Because of that, Australia feels like one of the band’s spiritual homes, and returning there always feels like a homecoming, a reunion.”

Jungle When: May 17 – May 22 Find more info

Jungle have unleashed more dancey goodness with their latest album, ‘Volcano’. Get ready to boogie in May when they tour Australia. The entire run, comprising the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney, Festival Hall in Melbourne, and Fortitude Music Hall in Brissy, is sold out.

Botch When: May 17 – 25 Find tickets and more info

Cult-favourite mathcore/hardcore/metal band Botch from Tacoma, Washington reunited last year more than two decades after their split – and now they’re embarking on their first-ever Aussie tour. The jaunt will include two dates in Melbourne and Sydney apiece as well as shows in Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane.

Guitarist David Knudson has promised Botch will go all out: “We don’t want to half-ass it…we want to be fucking tight as we ever were, if not tighter. We don’t want to disappoint a fan that’s never seen us live. So you know, it’s all in or nothing.”

Peter Hook & The Light When: May 21 – 28 Find tickets and more info

Peter Hook , the legendary bassist and co-founder of Joy Division and New Order is set to return to Australia in May 2024, just two years after his last tour of the country in 2022. For the upcoming tour, Hook will perform the New Order and Joy Division substance compilations live, giving fans a chance to once again revel in both bands’ music.

The Snuts When: May 23 – May 26 Find tickets and more info

Scottish indie rockers The Snuts will return for their second Australian tour in as many years, following their debut run of headline shows in 2023. With third studio album ‘Millennials’ in tow, the band will kick off their 2024 tour with a show at Melbourne’s Northcote Theatre. They’ll play Sydney’s Metro Theatre on May 25, before a show at the Triffid in Brisbane the following evening. Find tickets here .

Tom Grennan When: May 29 – May 30 Find tickets and more info

Tom Grennan will duck over to Australia for a pair of headline shows this year, following a debut visit in 2022. The English singer-songwriter will play Sydney’s Metro Theatre and 170 Russell in Melbourne on May 29 and 30 respectively.

Since his last trip, Grennan has released his third studio album, ‘What Ifs & Maybes’. Find tickets here .

Sky Ferreira When: June 2 – June 4 Find more info and tickets here

It’s been 12 years since Sky Ferreira released her debut ‘Night Time, My Time’, and her mystique has only grown in the interim: Ferriera has explored the silver screen, modelling, and long teased the release of a second album ‘Masochism’ . She’ll play two rare headline shows at bespoke Melbourne and Sydney festivals RISING and Vivid LIVE this June – a decade after her last Australian performance.

Boney M featuring Maizie Williams: The Farewell Tour When: June 3 – July 6 Find tickets and more info

Legendary disco group Boney M and vocalist Maizie Williams will bid goodbye to Australia with an extensive national tour in June and July 2024. Don’t wait to get your tickets – 15 of the 20 shows are sold out. More info here.

Bar Italia When: June 4 – June 8 Find more info and tickets here

Buzzy London trio Bar Italia are proteges of Dean Blunt, and have emerged from relative anonymity in the last few years with two albums of sinister post-punk. They’ll tour Australia for the first time in June, playing at Oxford Art Factory in Sydney and Brisbane’s Black Bear Lodge before a matinee show in Melbourne as part of RISING festival.

Deerhoof: Miracle Level Tour When: June 12 – June 16 Find tickets and more info

Indie vets Deerhoof return to Australia this June for the Miracle Level Tour, in support of their 19th (!) album of the same name. They’ll play five cities in five days, kicking off in Melbourne and then heading to Sydney for Vivid before Brisbane, Adelaide and finally Perth.

LANY When: June 19 – June 28 Find tickets and more info

LANY – the pop duo of Paul Klein and Jake Goss – will return to Australia in mid-2024. After playing small, intimate shows down under in August 2023, they’ll go bigger in this national tour at venues including the Hordern Pavilion and Margaret Court Arena. See info on dates and tickets here.

Lizzy McAlpine: The Older Tour When: July 11 – July 18 Find tickets and more info

A year after breaking out with TikTok hit ‘Ceilings’, Lizzy McAlpine has released her major-label debut, the album ‘Older’. To celebrate, she’ll stage her debut headline shows in Australia with four stops across Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Conan Gray When: July 11 – July 19 Find more info and tickets here

Conan Gray is the archetypal Gen Z popstar, honing his craft as a teenage YouTube vlogger before unleashing his multimodal talent as a singer. Gray will play songs from his upcoming third album ‘Found Heaven’ in some of the biggest rooms in the country this July, as well as a headline spot at Adelaide’s Spin Off Festival on July 19.

Girl In Red: Doing It Again: Asia/Oceania Tour When: July 11 – July 21 Find tickets and more info

She’s doing it again: Marie Ulven aka Girl In Red returns to Australia after selling out her headline tour here last year. The Norwegian alt-pop sensation will play Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane this go round. Pre-sale begins Friday April 26, while general on-sale kicks off Monday April 29.

• READ MORE: Girl In Red on her new album: “It’s ballsy, big dick energy”

Tenacious D When: July 13 – July 22 Find tickets and more info

It’s been more than a decade since Tenacious D toured Australia, but that all changes in July. Jack Black and Kyle Gass will play their first shows in the country since 2013, performing six arena dates.

The tour will kick off with two shows at the ICC Sydney Theatre on July 13, continuing on to Newcastle, Brisbane and Melbourne before wrapping up at Adelaide Entertament centre on July 22. Find tickets here .

FLETCHER When: July 16 – July 28 Find tickets and more info

After postponing her original tour, the rescheduled dates for FLETCHER ’s long-awaited Australian visit have been locked in for mid-2024. Audiences across the country will revel in FLETCHER’s latest album ‘Girl Of My Dreams’ towards the end of July, with venues including Perth’s Metro City (July 16), Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane (July 18), Festival Hall in Melbourne (July 23) and Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion (July 28). Find tickets here.

The Last Dinner Party When: July 20 – July 23 Find tickets and more info

Nothing else will matter when The Last Dinner Party touch down in Australia this July. See the buzzy baroque indie pop band – and NME Cover stars – in Brisbane (a co-headline with TV Girl), Melbourne and Sydney (both supported by Tia Gostelow).

• READ MORE: The Last Dinner Party: the newly-coronated monarchs of baroque-pop

IVE: 1ST WORLD TOUR ‘SHOW WHAT I HAVE’ When: July 25 – July 28 Find tickets and more info

As part of their broader debut world tour, IVE will bring their ‘Show What I Have’ set to Australian shores in July, kicking off the two-date run at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena on July 25. The K-pop group will conclude the Australian leg of their tour in support of 2023 album ‘I’ve IVE’ with a show at Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena on July 28. Find tickets here.

• READ MORE: IVE – ‘I’VE MINE’ review: K-pop’s queen bees grow beyond the archetype

HEALTH: Rat Based Warfare Tour Down Under When: July 31 – August 4 Find more info and tickets here

The electronic body music of HEALTH flirts with metal, noise, and synth wave, but remains uniquely their own. The band are back in Australia after their 2023 Dark Mofo appearance for a full tour in support of their seventh album ‘Rat Wars’. They’ll play cosy rooms in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane from late July this year.

Greta Van Fleet: Starcatcher World Tour When: August 21 – August 27 Find tickets and more info

Classic rock revivalists Greta Van Fleet return to Australia for the first time in five years this August, supporting their 2023 album ‘Starcatcher’. They’ll kick things off in Brisbane then head to Sydney and Melbourne.

aespa: SYNK: Parallel Line Tour When: August 31 – September 2 Find more info

K-pop girl group aespa will bring all the dra-ma-ma-ma down under for two stops of their SYNK: Parallel Line tour. The four-piece of Karina , Giselle , Winter and NingNing will perform at Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena on August 31 and head to Melbourne for the Rod Laver Arena two days later. A Telstra pre-sale begins May 7 while a TEG Live + Ticketek pre-sale begins two days later. General on-sale starts May 10.

• READ MORE: The 25 best K-pop songs of 2023

Iron Maiden: The Future Past Tour When: September 1 – September 13 Find tickets and more info

In what will be their first trip Down Under since 2017, Iron Maiden are poised to bring The Future Past tour to stadiums in Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne next September.

The first three cities will host the metal legends between September 1 to September 10, while Melbourne and Sydney will each enjoy a two-night outing at Rod Laver Arena (September 6 and 7) and Qudos Bank Arena (September 12 and 13), respectively. Find tickets here.

J Balvin: Que Bueno Volver a Verte Tour When: September 4 – September 10 Find more info and tickets here

J Balvin’s career as the Prince of Reggaeton has dovetailed with an explosion in the popularity of Latin music worldwide. The juggernaut will bring his Que Bueno Volver a Verte Tour (It’s Good To See You Tour) to Australian arenas in September this year. Sofi Tukker will support him as he plays the biggest rooms in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth.

Laufey: Bewitched: The Goddess Tour When: September 7 – September 14 Find tickets and more info

Get ready to fall under Laufey’s spell this September. The young jazz-pop star’s first Aussie tour last year sold out in minutes, and the Bewitched: The Goddess Tour looks set to do the same, with pre-sales already fully exhausted. She’ll play two shows in Sydney and Melbourne apiece, and also perform in Brisbane – general on-sale begins Friday April 26.

• READ MORE: Laufey on winning her first Grammy: “There is no way to prepare. It was really amazing”

SiM: Playdead World Tour When: September 12 – September 15 Find tickets and more info here

Like a kind of Japanese Gorillaz , SiM are a content universe unto their own – spanning anime , video games and records. Australian audiences can experience their inimitable reggae-metal-punk at The Zoo in Brisbane September 12, Sydney’s Crowbar on September 14 or Max Watts in Melbourne on September 15.

Thirty Seconds To Mars: Seasons World Tour When: September 12 – September 17 Find tickets and more info

To announce Thirty Seconds To Mars ’ Seasons World Tour, Jared Leto pulled a massive stunt: scaling the Empire State Building . The tour comes in support of their album ‘It’s The End Of The World But It’s A Beautiful Day’ and will hit Australian shores in mid-September. It marks the band’s first headline tour in over five years, and will see them grace the stage at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena (September 12), Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney (September 14) and Brisbane’s Riverstage (September 17). Find tickets here.

Ne-Yo: Champagne & Roses Tour When: September 26 – October 3 Find tickets and more info

Come closer – Ne-Yo is coming back to Australia for the Champagne & Roses Tour with special guest Lloyd. Expect smooth throwback R&B in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Sydney.

• READ MORE: Soundtrack Of My Life: Ne-Yo

The Reytons When: September 29 – October 5 Find more info and tickets here

Yorkshire four-piece The Reytons are revivalists of another revival – 2000s British indie. But this band is independent in the truer sense of the word, self-releasing their latest album ‘Ballad of a Bystander’. They will tour their raucous, ungenteel rock from late September to early October this year, packing rooms in Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne.

The Kid LAROI When: October 2024 Find tickets and more info

US-based homegrown rap phenom The Kid LAROI ‘s return to Australia was supposed to take place in February, but it was postponed in December , with the Gamilaroi star calling February “logistically impossible”. Instead, he’ll fill stadiums around the country in October with tracks from his freshly released debut album ‘The First Time’. With shows locked in for Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Sydney and the Gold Coast, these all-ages shows will be his biggest to date. Stay tuned for more info on specific dates for the rescheduled tour.

• READ MORE: The Kid LAROI live in Sydney: A hometown hero returns a certified legend

Passenger When: October 17 – October 23 Find tickets and more info

Passenger’s first Australian tour in six years also serves as a celebration of his 2012 album ‘All The Little Lights’, which received an anniversary edition last year. This jaunt will feature Josh Pyke as supporting act and, notably, two shows at the Sydney Opera House (one of which is already sold out).

• READ MORE: Soundtrack Of My Life: Passenger

Kim Wilde: The Greatest Hits Tour When: October 17 – October 26 Find more info and tickets here

If you look at the pop charts for any given week in the 1980s, chances are Kim Wilde was on it. The ‘Kids in America’ singer is still performing, on a break from her new life as a gardener, and will play a whirlwind Australian tour this October. Wilde will begin in Brisbane on October 17, before heading through Tweed Heads, Sydney, Wollongong, Perth, Adelaide and finishing in Melbourne October 26.

• READ MORE: Soundtrack of My Life: Kim Wilde

Buzzcocks When: October 24 – November 2 Find more info and tickets here

The Buzzcocks , progenitors of “love punk” and pop punk before it even existed, are still going strong almost 50 years after their formation. With Steve Diggle on vocals, replacing the late Pete Shelley, the band will return to Australia for seven shows in late October to early November. The Buzzcocks will begin on the Gold Coast on October 24, before travelling through Brisbane, Adelaide, Fremantle, Newcastle, Sydney and finishing in Melbourne on November 2.

PinkPantheress: Capable of Love Tour When: October 29 – November 5 Find tickets and more info here

PinkPantheress was once an anonymous beatmaker going viral on TikTok – she’s anything but anonymous now, as she comes to Australia for the first time promoting her debut album ‘Heaven’. Between opening for Coldplay , the 22-year-old Brit will headline shows at Melbourne’s Festival Hall (October 29) and Horden Pavilion in Sydney on November 5.

Coldplay: Music of the Spheres Tour When: October 30 – November 9 Find tickets and more info here

Coldplay will bring their ‘Music of the Spheres’ tour to Australia’s east coast at the end of a more than two-year stretch. The pop juggernauts have already sold 9 million tickets – the most for any tour in history – and are set to play eight stadium shows in Melbourne and Sydney after playing in Perth in 2023.

Expect to experience the galactic sprawl of the band’s recent rock operas, while still belting out the anthems that took them to the top.

Take That and Sophie Ellis-Bextor When: October 30 – November 10 Find tickets and more info

It’ll be murder on the dancefloor when this tour comes to town. Sophie Ellis-Bextor , enjoying a Saltburn -fueled resurgence, will accompany Take That on a six-show tour of Australia . Three dates of the tour, which marks Take That’s first live shows in the region since 2017, will take place at wineries as part of A Day on the Green, where Ricki-Lee Coulter will also appear.

• READ MORE: Sophie Ellis-Bextor on the return of ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ – and watching Saltburn with her mum

Hozier: Unreal Unearth Tour When: November 6 – November 18 Find more info and tickets here

Irish singer-songwriter Hozier will tour Down Under for the first time since 2019 this November, supporting his 2023 album ‘Unreal Unearth’ with a nation-wide arena sojourn. Hozier will kick off in Perth on November 6, before heading through Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. He will also play regional areas Torquay and the Hunter Valley as part of Summersalt festival.

• READ MORE: Hozier: “There has always been a space in my work for my own conscience”

Tate McRae: Think Later World Tour When: November 8 – November 17 Find tickets and more info

In what marks her biggest headline Australian shows to date, Tate McRae’s Think Later World Tour will head Down Under in November, encompassing five shows in Perth (November 8), Brisbane (November 10), Sydney (November 12), Adelaide (November 15) and Melbourne (November 17). The tour comes in support of McRae’s sophomore album ‘Think Later’, which features her massive single ‘Greedy’. Tickets are available here.

Pearl Jam: Dark Matter World Tour 2024 When: November 13 – November 23 Find tickets and more info

Pearl Jam have announced their new album ‘Dark Matter’, which they’ll support with a massive tour around the world . They’ll make a stop Down Under with Pixies in support, playing stadium shows in the Gold Coast, Melbourne and Sydney. The grunge giants have added bonus gigs in Melbourne on November 18 and Sydney on November 23 in response to overwhelming demand. Find tickets here.

James Blunt: The Who We Used To Be Tour When: November 21 – November 28 Find tickets and more info here

Self-deprecating superstar James Blunt is returning to Australian stages for the first time in over six years in November 2024. The ‘You’re Beautiful’ singer will begin a five-date arena tour at Brisbane’s Riverstage on November 21, before heading through Sydney’s ICC Super Theatre (November 23), Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena (November 24), Adelaide’s Entertainment Centre Theatre (November 25) and Perth’s Red Hill Auditorium (November 28).

Wallows: Model Tour 2024 When: December 5 – December 14 Find more info and tickets here

US alt-rockers Wallows played some of their favourite shows ever on their previous tour of Australia – so they’ll undoubtedly be looking to top the experience when they return in December. They’ll kick things off in Perth, before heading to Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and finally Brisbane.

• Depeche Mode

Aussie Depeche Mode fans are an incredibly patient bunch. The last time the British synth-pop titans toured the country was in 1994, meaning nearly three decades have passed since they last paid us a visit. But good things come to those who wait, and it seems there is a glimmer of hope for those hoping to catch the band Down Under.

• READ MORE: Depeche Mode: every single album ranked and rated

In March 2023, Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan told an Italian blog that the band were eyeing “as-yet-unannounced dates in Asia and Australia” as part of a touring run that would lead into 2024. The band have toured the world in support of their latest album, ‘Memento Mori’ , and a trip to Australia to cap off the jaunt seems more likely than ever.

Additional reporting by Ellie Robinson, Tom Disalvo and Josh Martin

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Here's What Each Player Will Bank at LIV Golf's Adelaide Event

LIV Golf returned to Australia, where it offered another $25 million purse. Here's the final breakdown of payouts.

• Author: Jeff Ritter

LIV Golf is back in Australia this week for the 2024 LIV Golf Adelaide event. Per usual, LIV has put up a $25 million purse, with $20 million for the individual competition and $5 million for the team event. The individual champion will bank $4 million.

LIV Golf Adelaide proved to be LIV's most raucous event of 2023, headlined by its par-3 12th "watering hole," where Chase Koepka made an ace . Talor Gooch is the defending champion.

Here are the full payouts for LIV Golf's 2024 Australia event.

2024 LIV Golf Adelaide Final Payouts

Win: $4 million

2: $2.25 million

3: $1.5 million

4: $1 million

5: $800,000

6: $700,000

7: $600,000

8: $525,000

9: $442,500

10: $405,000

11: $380,000

12: $360,000

13: $340,000

14: $330,000

15: $300,000

16: $285,000

17: $270,000

18: $260,000

19: $250,000

20: $240,000

21: $230,000

22: $220,000

23: $210,000

24: $200,000

25: $195,000

26: $190,000

27: $185,000

28: $180,000

29: $175,000

30: $170,000

31: $165,000

32: $160,000

33: $155,000

34: $150,000

35: $148,000

36: $145,000

37: $143,000

38: $140,000

39: $138,000

40: $135,000

41: $133,000

42: $130,000

43: $128,000

44: $128,000

45: $125,000

46: $125,000

47: $123,000

48: $120,000

49: $60,000

50: $60,000

51: $60,000

52: $50,000

53: $50,000

54: $50,000

2024 LIV Golf Team Event Prize Money

Win: $3 million

2: $1.5 million

3: $500,000

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Australia's Grace Kim opens 4-stroke lead at LA Championship

• Associated Press

LOS ANGELES -- Grace Kim opened a four-stroke lead Friday in the LPGA Tour's JM Eagle LA Championship, shooting a 5-under 66 in tricky afternoon conditions at Wilshire Country Club.

A stroke ahead after an opening 64, Kim had an eagle, four birdies and a bogey to get to 12-under 130. The 23-year-old Australian patiently worked her way around the tree-lined layup, trying not to get frustrated with the bumpy greens.

"I think the less thoughts, the better," Kim said. "Obviously, during the afternoon round today, we've got poa annua greens so just have to stay patient with them. You can kind of see how it can get bumpy, so working with the course and not getting too wrapped up around putts not going in."

Maja Stark was second after a 69, also in the afternoon.

"I feel like maybe not taking everything so personal because they are a little bit wobbly." Stark said. "Especially late. Like the whole day pretty much the ball has been wobbling because there has been so many people walking on it."

The Swede finished second last week in Texas in The Chevron Championship, two strokes behind top-ranked Nelly Korda in the first major of the year. Korda withdrew Monday, a day after her fifth straight victory.

Defending champion Hannah Green of Australia shot a 69 to join Germany's Esther Henseleit (68) at 6 under. Denmark's Kristine Pedersen (67) and American Auston Kim (71) were 5 under, and Rose Zhang (69) topped the group at 4 under.

Grace Kim won the LOTTE Championship last year in a playoff in Hawaii for her first LPGA Tour title. She missed the cut in The Chevron , shooting 76-72.

She started play Friday on the back nine, rebounding from a bogey on the par-3 12th with the eagle on the par-5 13th and a birdie on the par-4 14th. On 13, she hit a 5-wood to 10 feet. She added birdies on Nos. 3, 6 and 7 on the second nine.

"I think I've got to breathe a little bit," she said. "I did get a little bit nervous on my back nine, so making sure I don't rush too much and just staying in the present."

More From Forbes

Kangaroo island: south australia’s paradise for animal lovers.

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Kangaroo Island is also referred to as "Karta Pintingga."

Australia is home to its fair share of fascinating creatures—the frilled lizard, quokka and platypus, to name a few—and when it comes to spotting a massive array of native species in the flesh, few destinations can compare to Kangaroo Island. Located just southwest of Adelaide, this storied site serves as one of South Australia’s crown jewels for ecotourism, with no shortage of protected preserves that play host to all sorts of indigenous flora and fauna. As you plan your next trip to Australia’s southern shore, be sure to save some room on the itinerary for a wildlife-filled foray into the depths of Kangaroo Island.

Spot Native Avifauna on a Birding Excursion

The New Holland honeyeater is a common sight across Kangaroo Island.

Australia’s diversity of landscapes and climates has given rise to a truly incredible array of indigenous avian species, with many of its most striking birds calling Kangaroo Island home—and for those hoping to spot a wealth of these marvelous creatures in the flesh, Bell Bird Tours offers the perfect multi-day voyage. Taking place in both September and November, the four-day Kangaroo Island Birding Tour takes guests deep into the interior of the island, providing visitors with an opportunity to encounter birds like the Cape Barren goose, white-bellied whipbird and tawny-crowned honeyeater—and as an added bonus, seabirds abound across Kangaroo Island’s perimeter, with the flesh-footed shearwater, Wilson's storm petrel and southern royal albatross serving as just a few of the species that might make an appearance.

For those visiting the island outside of September and November, Exceptional Kangaroo Island has been in the tour business since 1986, with multiple curated excursions that highlight the culture and natural beauty of the surrounding region. During a three-day Wild About Birds tour, guests can immerse themselves in the splendor of Kangaroo Island from an entirely-avian perspective, with countless passerines, waders and raptors all appearing throughout the journey. While there’s no shortage of fascinating sites on the itinerary, highlights range from Roper’s Gums—a top spot for scoping out glossy black cockatoos—to Duck Lagoon, a billabong that’s rife with native waterfowl.

Sample Traditional Ligurian Honey at an Island Apiary

There are roughly eight extant honey bee species on the planet.

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Australia is known for sweet treats ranging from fairy bread to Tim Tams, but for those who visit Kangaroo Island, there’s a particularly fascinating confection found in the form of Ligurian honey. This sugary substance is produced in abundance by the Ligurian honey bee, a type of domesticated insect that was first bred in the Italian region of Liguria—and while this particular breed of bee has been wiped out across the globe due to crossbreeding, Kangaroo Island’s isolation from the mainland has allowed the animals to thrive without interference, ultimately establishing the surrounding region as the last bastion of the Ligurian honey bee.

Visitors hoping to sample their honey in person have a wealth of options scattered across the island, with Clifford’s Honey Farm located in the locality of Haines. Upon arrival, guests can kick off their thirty-minute tour with a hearty helping of fresh honey ice cream, then make their way to the property’s polished glass beehive to look for the queen. Post-search, the on-site shop is packed full of honey-based sauces and dressings, while the mead is a top choice for visitors wishing to take a boozy souvenir back to the mainland. Further north, the Kangaroo Island Ligurian Bee Co has been a top spot for honey tasting since 2001, inviting guests to take part in a facility tour that highlights topics spanning from bee conservation to the overall honey-making process.

Discover Endemic Mammals on a Wildlife Tour

The short-beaked echidna is one of the few egg-laying mammal species found on earth today.

Australia is renowned for its spectacular mammalian biodiversity, and Kangaroo Island is no exception. As one might be able to guess from the name, the region is brimming with large mobs of western grey kangaroos, but for those hoping to spot some of the island’s more elusive fauna, the Hanson Bay Wildlife Sanctuary is an essential destination. Established in the late ‘90s, this private preserve has acted as a crucial haven for native mammals for decades, with its koalas serving as a particularly popular draw for tourists. Guests can marvel at these endemic animals during a Guided Koala Walk, while the Sunset Nocturnal Adventure Tour is perfect for spotting creatures spanning from the tammar wallaby to the short-beaked echidna.

During daylight hours, the aforementioned Exceptional Kangaroo Island is also a top company for wildlife-focused excursions. For those in search of a single-day tour, the Flinders Chase Focus excursion casts a spotlight on Flinders Chase National Park, a scenic expanse of land that’s rife with short-beaked echidnas, long-nosed fur seals and a wealth of other species. Meanwhile, serious wildlife aficionados can spring for a three-day Conservation Connection tour. In addition to exploring renowned natural sites like Stokes Bay and the Cygnet Valley, this itinerary also offers the opportunity to meet with esteemed wildlife experts for a deep dive on the physiology of Kangaroo Island’s most iconic mammals.

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Australia’s Grace Kim opens 4-stroke lead in LPGA Tour’s JM Eagle LA Championship

Grace Kim hits from the 16th tee during the first round of the LPGA LA Championship golf tournament at Wilshire Country Club, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

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LOS ANGLES (AP) — Grace Kim opened a four-stroke lead Friday in the LPGA Tour’s JM Eagle LA Championship, shooting a 5-under 66 in tricky afternoon conditions at Wilshire Country Club.

A stroke ahead after an opening 64, Kim had an eagle, four birdies and a bogey to get to 12-under 130. The 23-year-old Australian patiently worked her way around the tree-lined layup, trying not to get frustrated with the bumpy greens.

“I think the less thoughts, the better,” Kim said. “Obviously, during the afternoon round today, we’ve got poa annua greens so just have to stay patient with them. You can kind of see how it can get bumpy, so working with the course and not getting too wrapped up around putts not going in.”

Maja Stark was second after a 69, also in the afternoon.

“I feel like maybe not taking everything so personal because they are a little bit wobbly.” Stark said. “Especially late. Like the whole day pretty much the ball has been wobbling because there has been so many people walking on it.”

The Swede finished second last week in Texas in The Chevron Championship, two strokes behind top-ranked Nelly Korda in the first major of the year. Korda withdrew Monday, a day after her fifth straight victory.

Defending champion Hannah Green of Australia shot a 69 to join Germany’s Esther Henseleit (68) at 6 under. Denmark’s Kristine Pedersen (67) and American Auston Kim (71) were 5 under, and Rose Zhang (69) topped the group at 4 under.

Grace Kim won the LOTTE Championship last year in a playoff in Hawaii for her first LPGA Tour title. She missed the cut in The Chevron , shooting 76-72.

She started play Friday on the back nine, rebounding from a bogey on the par-3 12th with the eagle on the par-5 13th and a birdie on the par-4 14th. On 13, she hit a 5-wood to 10 feet. She added birdies on Nos. 3, 6 and 7 on the second nine.

“I think I’ve got to breathe a little bit,” she said. “I did get a little bit nervous on my back nine, so making sure I don’t rush too much and just staying in the present.

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf