The Prince of Wales visits Cairns on the #RoyalVisitAustralia
Published
The Prince of Wales began day five of the Royal visit to Australia with a church service at St John's Anglican Church in Cairns, Queensland. His Royal Highness was greeted by the Bishop of North Queensland, The Right Reverend Bill Ray and Reverend Rod Gooden. After the service, The Prince met with parishioners, including those who provide services to the community through Anglicare North Queensland.
The Prince of Wales then travelled to HMAS Cairns to present The Duke of Gloucester's Cup on board HMAS Leeuwin and met Defence personnel to learn about their work. HMAS Cairns is an active naval base that provides operational, administrative and logistics support (including maintenance and training) to homeported ships, support craft, resident units and visiting Fleet Units. Approximately 925 Defence personnel are employed on the base.
The Duke of Gloucester’s Cup is the award for the Royal Australian Navy unit displaying the highest level of overall proficiency for the year.
In the afternoon, The Prince of Wales visited the Royal Flying Doctors Service (RFDS) Cairns Base to celebrate its continuing innovation in this, its 90th year. The Prince also helped to celebrate the newest addition to the RFDS aeromedical fleet, uniquely configured as an ‘intensive care unit of the sky’ – the B350 Super King Air. The Prince formally named the new aircraft Outback Angel.
Using the latest in aviation, medical and communications technology, the Royal Flying Doctor Service (Queensland Section) provides care to anyone who lives, works or travels in rural and remote Queensland. The Queensland operation delivers more than 95,000 occasions of care in more than 85 locations to people across the state each year.
The Prince later visited the World Heritage Listed Daintree Rainforest to join a roundtable discussion on sustainable forestry. This brought together industry representatives from Australia and New Zealand.
A Welcome to Country smoking ceremony was then performed by Mr Roy Gibson, a Kuku Yalanji Aboriginal Elder. His Royal Highness accompanied Mr Gibson on a guided tour of the Ngadiku Dreamtime walk to learn more about the relationship that the Kuku Yalanji people have had with this unique tropical environment for over 50,000 years.
In the evening, The Prince of Wales attended Commonwealth Games Basketball events. Joined by Lauren Jackson, one of Australia's greatest sportspeople and arguably the finest women's basketballer of all time, The Prince enjoyed the Women's India v New Zealand preliminary round and, following the game, met the players.
Follow #RoyalVisitAustralia on Twitter and Instagram to keep up to date with the latest news from Their Royal Highnesses’ visit.
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