Australia’s travel industry says it is bracing for an “influx” of Australians deciding to travel to London to attend Queen Elizabeth’s funeral.
Guardian Australia understands the very few remaining Qantas seats from Australian capital cities to London have been quickly booked since the news of the Queen’s death. Peter Hosper, the commercial director of Travel Authority Group, said his agency was preparing for more inquiries on Monday.
David Goldman, the joint managing director at Goldman Travel in Bondi Junction, said he had received inquiries from Australians who wanted to be in London regardless of whether they had prior travel booked.
“People want to be there. They want to be connected,” Goldman said.
He said one of his clients had paid a “fairly significant” amount of money to bring forward the date of his travel from Australia to the UK to be able to attend the funeral.
Monarchist and politics student Alex Readman, 23, said he was among those Australians who wanted to go to London for the Queen’s funeral.
Being at Westminster Hall when the Queen was lying in state, he said, presented a chance to fulfil his wish “to have some sort of connection to her legacy”.
However, Readman said that, despite his deep respect for the Queen, the post-pandemic price of flights had proved prohibitive for his budget.
Readman said when he looked up flights to London before the pandemic they had been around $1,500 but the only flights he could find this weekend had a $5,000 price tag.
Readman’s earliest memory of the Queen was writing her a letter, aged seven, expressing his concern about the Australian government’s response to the drought.
“I remember vividly getting a letter in the mail and, on the back of the letter, it was sealed with the Royal Mail stamp, and it was in this beautiful letter, and it had all these stamps and markings on it, because it had gone from the UK to Australia, and it was from the official secretary to Her Majesty the Queen,” Readman said.
Dozens of bunches of flowers were left outside Melbourne’s Government House on Saturday, as well-wishers wrote condolences and paused to honour the monarch.
Similar scenes played out in Sydney and other state capitals. Some brought large, professionally-wrapped bouquets of flowers, while others left bunches of homegrown blooms fastened with ribbon or sticky tape.
Sandra Alexandridis, of Reservoir, burst into tears outside the makeshift memorial in Melbourne as she remembered the Queen.
“She was a rock of society,” she said. “It’s like you’ve lost your grandmother, a member of your family.
“She always managed to put us all at ease and that’s something that you cherish because not many people – even politicians – have that.”
Andrea Westh, from Middle Park, was a baby in her mother’s arms when she was taken into central London to watch the Queen’s coronation in 1953.
“She’s just been like my grandmother, my spiritual leader,” she said.
A devoted royalist who hopes to travel to the UK with her husband to attend King Charles’s coronation, Westh said she had always admired the new monarch as a longstanding champion for climate action.
Wendy Simpson, who came to lay flowers for the Queen at Government House in Sydney, said she had considered attending the Queen’s funeral but her husband had refused.
Simpson said she had come to lay flowers for the Queen because “when I was growing up, I was in the Girl Guides. And we used to talk a lot about the Queen, she was a Girl Guide. And then we would have the picture of the Queen in our classroom.”
She said she was also there representing her 90-year old mother, who had a stroke and could not come pay tribute herself.
“As a woman, I’ve been very inspired by the Queen.”
Jenny Collins brought her six-year-old daughter, Scarlett, to lay flowers at Government House in Sydney.
“The Queen is an amazing role model, especially for our girls. They’ll know a king forevermore now, and we grew up with the Queen.”
Jenny Collins brought her 6 year old daughter Scarlett to lay flowers so she would have something to remember the Queen by.
— Natasha May (@natasha__may) September 10, 2022
“The Queen an amazing role model, especially for our girls. They'll know a king forevermore now, and we grew up with the queen.” pic.twitter.com/NhE7LYPux1
Alexander Hartnell, 31, said he was a republican but the issue of constitutional change was “a question for another time”.
He came to pay his respects after seeing how moved people were by the Queen’s death.
“I could tell the genuine grief on people’s faces and it was the end of the 20th century for a lot of people,” he said.
• Australian Associated Press contributed to this report
