royal visit 1954 - 1

This Queen's Birthday long weekend has given me an excuse to dig out some photos from the vault, and post a tribute to Her Majesty. These are some family snaps from her 1954 tour to Australia, and I like them because they give a personal angle to events I've only seen from the official media side.

The Gothic arrives through Sydney's Heads.

The Queen was given a very full schedule while here, and this series of pics is of her visit to Bondi for a Surf Carnival. Outside St Mary's Church as the entourage turns from Carrington Rd into Birrell St. In the background is part of the Memorial Hospital in Bondi Junction, where I was born many years later.

The anticipation builds as the first car swings into view. 

Another police car and then the Queen's open top Bentley arrives. The crowd begins to crane.

Well, that's all over with, as some watch after and others begin to break up.

The intersection stills look much the same today, except for the addition of traffic lights and trees. To the right now stands the huge telecom tower.

Enlargements of the first two vehicles. The right is an early model Holden, the left I think is a Morris something, if a reader may know?

The surf carnival in progress, taken from Notts Ave. When Bondi still had Norfolk pines.

Here's a link to archival photos of the event [National Library in Canberra.]

Afterward, it's up Warner Avenue on the return. If you lived in one of those flats you'd be beside yourself that the Queen drove up your street.

~

HM also opened the 1954 session of State Parliament. Macquarie Street outside Sydney Hospital, opposite Martin Place.

I like this one for the hat value, women were so elegant. Don't you love those days.

 

At first I couldn't place where this could have been taken, as the streetscape is foreign. It was only by that first tall building I realised it was still Macquarie St.

The same view today.

Vandals invaded Sydney in the sixties and seventies and destroyed almost every ornate sandstone pile in the CBD.

~

Another duty was the opening of Sandringham Gardens in the southeast corner of Hyde Park North. It was dedicated to the Queen's father, King George V. It still looks the same today. [A link here to an official archive photo.]

 

After the opening, Park St between the Hyde Parks, the Australian Museum in the background. Those arches were placed over most major roads, in the shape of boomerangs to symbolise "the hope that the Queen would return".

How times have changed. For me though, I appreciate the Queen has been an unwavering constant throughout of grace, strength, honour, and respect, despite decades of pressure.

God save the Queen!