Quote:
Prince Harry heads to Australia
September 21, 2003
When Harry Wales goes through customs at Sydney airport on Monday, he will attract a lot more attention than the average English schoolkid out to earn his stripes in Australia.
Prince Harry is one of the 10,000 British school leavers living out their dream of partying and tasting freedom in Australia this year before they embark on work, university or, in Harry's case, military academy.
The third in line to Britain's throne is expected to spend at least four months in Australia with an emphasis on playing polo, watching England at the rugby World Cup and reportedly working on a sheep farm and even at Kerry Packer's polo stables.
Harry, 18, will be introduced to the Australian media at a photo opportunity in Sydney on Tuesday when some details of his trip will be revealed.
Officials at Clarence House, where his father the Prince of Wales now lives, stress his trip is private and have not confirmed any details of the post-school sabbatical, which has become as fashionable among Britain's youth as Harry's carefully manicured unkempt hair.
It may be his first trip overseas without his father or any other member of the royal family, but it's not as if he's branching out alone after finishing school in June.
A team of 12 royal security officers costing STG25,000 ($A60,768) a week will be a few steps behind him, trying to keep tabs on the young prince whose healthy teenage appetite for a good time has seen him give his minders the slip more than once in the past to drink with friends and smoke marijuana.
He may even be tagged with a microchip so his overworked security men can keep track of him.
Australia has agreed to spend more than $A600,000 on local back-up, including a crack special forces unit.
And people he is expected to meet along the way have been thoroughly checked.
It's a hefty step up from the security in Patagonia in Chile in 2000 for his more subdued brother Prince William who only had two officers at a cost of about STG100,000 ($A243,072).
But the measures are not just to protect Harry from himself.
British and Australian police and palace officials fear he could be a terrorist target and are worried about his plans to enter big crowds in exposed areas at the rugby, on the beach and in the pubs and bars of Sydney.
"Patagonia is a far cry from Australia," a palace source has been quoted as saying.
"The place Prince William went to was very isolated and very easy to police.
©2003 AAP
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so, let me get this straight...
Prince Harry (whose own personal net worth is over $A200mil) wants to have an extended trip down under... so we (Australians) get to pay $A600,000 on him.
hurrah.
thats more than half a million we get to spend on an unwanted royal holiday rather than on improving our healthcare system or something else thats in need.
even his own security guards are complaining about the trip....
more info here
i´ve got to say, no one down here would give a hoot if he was a terrorist target.
but that microchip does sound amusing... wonder if the corgies are chipped as well??