DPA/Sydney
The young royals showed they were old hands at bringing cheer to the afflicted when visiting the Blue Mountains west of Sydney yesterday to meet victims of forest fires.
The duke and duchess of Cambridge came face to face with families who lost everything when over 200 properties went up in flames one hot and windy afternoon in October.
“It’s devastating to be left with just the clothing you’re standing up in,” Jennie Hall told national broadcaster ABC. “But this is wonderful. It’s a shot in the arm for everyone here.”
William and Kate ignored an itinerary which had them meeting just a handful of bushfire victims to hear accounts of burned homes, lost jobs and smashed lives.
They ran half an hour late to listen to personal tragedies, broken dreams and tales of the heroism of the volunteers who battled flames that leaped from ridge to mountain ridge, incinerating everything in their path.
Locals in Winmalee, which lost whole streets, were hours early for the motorcade to make the 75km journey from Sydney, the couple’s base for the first three days of their 10-day Australian tour.
They lined the road, sometimes five deep, loaded with bunches of wildflowers and handmade present for Prince George.
Eartha Odell, 47, said the royal visitors were a delight. “For them to come out all this way to say hello and say ‘I’m sorry this happened to you’ ... it didn’t seem like a duty to them. It seemed like a pleasure.”
Prince George, third in line to the British throne, was again left with the nanny as his father stepped out in a blue blazer, white open-necked shirt and grey slacks.
Kate, as ever, was dressed to the nines, this time in a blue and white Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress with blue wedge-heeled shoes.
“I want to shake as many hands as I can,” William said as the crowd pressed in on him.
“What’s your story?” he asked those eager to unburden themselves of a load lightened by their brush with royalty.
The duchess made a point of thanking the fire brigades that Winmalee and most rural hamlets put together on their own.
“To not have any loss of life is incredible,” she said.
William and Catherine with girl guides at Winmalee, an area in the Blue Mountains heavily affected by bushfires.
