In Victoria’s high country in 1966, a small group of teenage boys snaked through Wonnangatta Valley. Among them was the heir to the British throne, who had sought refuge from public life, a feverish tabloid press and the isolation the shy prince faced at a Scottish boarding school.
In Central Victoria, weekend hikes were part of the gruelling physical schedule that underpins the curriculum at Timbertop, the remote campus of one of Australia’s most elite private schools – Geelong Grammar.
King Charles III – then the 17-year-old Prince of Wales – spent two terms at the campus, sparking his enduring love of Australia.
Academic studies were punctuated with tri-weekly cross-country runs, games of tug and pull, weekend hikes, and collecting and chopping wood for hot water.
“He wasn’t athletic but with everyone he did he was a wonderful try-er and you could see he was putting in his all,” recounts former student Chas Armytage, who also attended Timbertop in 1966 as a 14-year-old.
“In the end he enjoyed the running, the hiking, the cutting of the wood and getting out in the bush.”
Armytage, now chair of Country Racing Victoria, remembers King Charles III as a “pretty shy sort of bloke”.
“It would have been a hell of a shock to him,” he says.
“Timbertop gave him a wonderful love of Australia – one he and his mother shares.”
The monarch relished the acceptance he found among his fellow students at the secluded campus. Back home, he was a future king, but at Timbertop he was “just plain Charles to us”, recalls former student Graeme Burnham.
“It would have been one of the most uncomplicated and free times of his life,” he says.
“But when the papers would arrive at school he’d say, ‘Oh, what was I doing yesterday?’ Because what was printed had nothing to do with what was happening,” he says.
Burnham remembers how Charles’s bodyguard – a police officer – would drive the future king of England around in a Holden station wagon.
“There was no fanfare, there was no bullshit,” he says.
As Sandy Maconochie, who also attended Timbertop in 1966, says: “He wasn’t a celebrity. He became one of us and we just related to him like we would any other of our peers.”
“We didn’t look up to him like he was a prince. We were all youngsters. We didn’t see him as different. He fitted in,” Maconochie says.
Burnham remembers that ease at which King Charles integrated into the local Mansfield community, sometimes accompanying the Timbertop staff to collect milk and meat for meals from local farmers.
“They were just good, straight country people who became very protective of him,” he says.
“He was only a kid and he needed a fair go.”
King Charles III shared a special bond with Victoria after his time at Timbertop. He has visited the state on several occasions, most notably in 1983, as part of a six-week tour of Australia and New Zealand with his then wife, Diana, Princess of Wales, and their 10-month-old son, Prince William, which attracted huge crowds and media coverage.
The couple returned in 1985 to celebrate the state of Victoria’s 150th anniversary, attending a charity concert with Molly Meldrum and Flemington racecourse for the Melbourne Cup. He visited again in 1988 for Australia’s bicentenary.
Finally, in 2005, he made a return to Geelong Grammar to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the school, to which he said he had been sent as a teenager “to be sorted out”.
He spoke of his “fond memories” of being called a “Pommie bastard”, a treacherous hike in a “blood-soaked shirt”, and being left “bloody well bushed” by the end of the two terms.
“But despite all this, I loved it all,” he said at the time.
His most recent visit to Victoria was in 2012.
Armytage says he was “fortunate” to have two encounters with the monarch after their shared days at Timbertop – at the Melbourne Cup in 1985 and 2012.
“He remembered me from the Timbertop days. So it was pretty special,” Armytage says.
“We woke up to the news about the Queen and it was a state of shock, and then we find out he’s now King Charles the third. I said to my wife this morning, ‘I went to school with him.’ It’s all just hard to believe.”
