IT'S been 34 years since Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip stopped in Newcastle on their 1988 Bicentennial tour of Australia.
The official itinerary has the Royal couple arriving in Newcastle on the morning of Saturday, May 7, 1988, sailing overnight from Sydney on the Royal Yacht Britannia.
First stop was the opening of the Newcastle Foreshore redevelopment, including Queens Wharf, which had begun the transformation of Newcastle's old industrial waterfront as a publicly funded Bicentennial project.
After an outdoor ceremony on the forecourt of Customs House, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were driven to City Hall, for a civic luncheon.
Afterwards, the Royal entourage acknowledged the huge crowd massed in King Street and Civic Park with a wave from City Hall's first-floor balcony.
Next stop was the opening of Newcastle Regional Museum, then housed in the old brewery buildings on the corner of Hunter Street and Wood Street - now the Quest apartments - before opening at Honeysuckle in 2011.
After the museum, the Royal left from Williamtown RAAF, where they flew to Canberra for the final few days of a tour that ended that Tuesday having started in Perth on April 19.
John McNaughton, Labor Lord Mayor of Newcastle at the time, has plenty of anecdotes from the Royal visit, including the story of tearing the trousers under his civic robes and his son Chris bringing a second pair from home.
Mike Scanlon's piece in the Weekender has the details.
A bit later on he was introducing Her Majesty to the aldermen when he looked up and saw his daughters Meg and Anne in place of Alderman Margaret Goumas and her husband Theo.
They'd been corralled by a security detail that had the necessary "22 people" and would not listen to their protests.
"I made sure Margaret and Theo were introduced later," Mr McNaughton laughed.
Mrs McNaughton said she watched in awe at the Queen's flawless protocol and effortless touch with the public, a train of ladies-in-waiting behind her waiting for her to reach a handful of flowers behind her back to enable her to continually receive the gifts that were proffered at almost every step.
Iris Nichols, who was there with her husband and deputy mayor, the late Denis Nichols, laughed at trying to keep pace alongside the Duke, "his giant strides taking one step to my three".
A proud Royalist who emigrated from England in 1963, she said "the Queen had this magnificent emerald brooch, I couldn't take my eyes off it".
"I wanted to pinch it!. And I remember thinking how proud my Dad would be of me."
Alderman Nichols had played a major role on the council in relation to the Bicentennial programs and had been speaking at the outdoor ceremony at the museum, which Mrs Nichols remembered yesterday was held in a wind that was "blowing a gale".
She said she realised Her Majesty couldn't hear what her husband was saying, and saw the Queen looking at her with a widened expression, asking, essentially, for a signal on timing.
"When Denis was finishing, I gave her a nod and she rose to unveil the plaque," Mrs Nichols said.
The 1988 visit was only 13 years after the most contentious moment in modern Australian political history, the sacking of Labor PM Gough Whitlam by the governor-general of the day Sir John Kerr.
"The Dismissal", as it has come to be known, is still debated, with the passing of time allowing the declassification of increasing numbers of documents kept hitherto secret, including correspondences between Kerr and the Royal household.
The McNaughtons, who both described themselves yesterday as republicans, said it was inevitable that a national debate about the future status of Australia would take place with the end of the second Elizabethan era.
They said, though, that people would need to be convinced of a robust legislative model to house an Australian head of state.
The 1988 visit came just a year-and-a-half before the event that changed everything in the city, the December 28, 1989, earthquake.
Mr McNaughton recalled that the Queen had reached out through official channels to inquire about the state of the city and the region, and Prince Edward, who had been on a Royal Tour that had taken him to New Zealand, had altered his itinerary to visit Newcastle on February 5, 1990.
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