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Britain's King Charles Meets Cheering Australian Crowds, Says 'Great Joy' to Return

Britain's King Charles and Queen Camilla attend Church on a tour of Australia St Thomas' Anglican Church, North Sydney, Australia, October 20, 2024. Ian Vogler/Pool via REUTERS
Britain's King Charles and Queen Camilla attend Church on a tour of Australia St Thomas' Anglican Church, North Sydney, Australia, October 20, 2024. Ian Vogler/Pool via REUTERS
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Britain's King Charles Meets Cheering Australian Crowds, Says 'Great Joy' to Return

Britain's King Charles and Queen Camilla attend Church on a tour of Australia St Thomas' Anglican Church, North Sydney, Australia, October 20, 2024. Ian Vogler/Pool via REUTERS
Britain's King Charles and Queen Camilla attend Church on a tour of Australia St Thomas' Anglican Church, North Sydney, Australia, October 20, 2024. Ian Vogler/Pool via REUTERS

Hundreds of well-wishers greeted Britain's King Charles and Queen Camilla in Sydney on Sunday as the royal couple attended church, with the king saying it was a "great joy" to return to Australia in his first visit to an overseas realm as sovereign.

Charles' 16th official visit to Australia, where he attended school for six months as a teenager in 1966, is also his first major foreign trip since being diagnosed with cancer, according to Reuters.

"What a great joy it is to come to Australia for the first time as sovereign and to renew a love of this country and its people which I have cherished for so long," he said in a speech at the New South Wales parliament.

New South Wales state lawmaker Kellie Sloane, whose electorate covers some of Sydney's most famous beaches, wrote on social media platform X after chatting with the king that he "sends his best to the 'amazing' surf clubs at Bondi Beach".

The royal couple were earlier greeted at St Thomas' Anglican Church by the archbishop of Sydney, Kanishka Raffel, and children from the church's Sunday school who waved Australian flags.

Camilla was given a flower bouquet by the minister's wife, Ellie Mantle, who asked if they had recovered from jet lag after the long flight to Australia on Friday. "Sort of," Camilla replied.

Inside the church, Charles and Camilla signed two bibles, including one that belonged to Australia's first minister and chaplain of the First Fleet of ships that took convicts from Britain to the penal colony of Australia in 1788.

Outside, the royal couple shook hands and chatted with a large crowd of cheering fans, some singing "God Save the King".

It was the public's first opportunity to meet Charles and Camilla since they arrived in Australia's biggest city on Friday night, and several hundred well wishers outnumbered a dozen protesters.

Travelling across Sydney Harbour, Charles visited the New South Wales parliament, marking the 200th anniversary of Australia's oldest legislature.

The king presented the lawmakers with an hour-glass to time their speeches, and highlighted the fundamental role of strong parliaments to democracies that serve today's diverse societies.

"Democracy has, I believe, an extraordinary capacity for innovation, compromise and adaptability as well as stability," he said.

The royal couple will travel to Canberra on Monday to meet Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the national parliament and visit the Australian War Memorial.

Albanese met the couple on Friday at Admiralty House, the historic government harbourside residence where they are staying, for what he said was an informal drink and chat.

The king will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa after the six-day Australia tour.

Charles had made a significant personal donation to create a skills program to tackle climate change and boost higher education in small island states, including the Pacific Islands, the Association of Commonwealth Universities said on Sunday.

Mid-career professionals and civil servants will benefit from the fellowships, in a program that aims to retain talent in small island states and bolster resilience to the impacts of climate change such as rising sea levels.

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Hungary's Oldest Library is Fighting to Save Books from Beetle Infestation

Books are kept in hermetically sealed plastic sacks for disinfection at the Pannonhalma Archabbey's library in Pannonhalma, Hungary, Thursday, July 3, 2025, as a beetle infestation threatens its ancient collection. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)
Books are kept in hermetically sealed plastic sacks for disinfection at the Pannonhalma Archabbey's library in Pannonhalma, Hungary, Thursday, July 3, 2025, as a beetle infestation threatens its ancient collection. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)
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Hungary's Oldest Library is Fighting to Save Books from Beetle Infestation

Books are kept in hermetically sealed plastic sacks for disinfection at the Pannonhalma Archabbey's library in Pannonhalma, Hungary, Thursday, July 3, 2025, as a beetle infestation threatens its ancient collection. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)
Books are kept in hermetically sealed plastic sacks for disinfection at the Pannonhalma Archabbey's library in Pannonhalma, Hungary, Thursday, July 3, 2025, as a beetle infestation threatens its ancient collection. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)

Tens of thousands of centuries-old books are being pulled from the shelves of a medieval abbey in Hungary in an effort to save them from a beetle infestation that could wipe out centuries of history.

The 1,000-year-old Pannonhalma Archabbey is a sprawling Benedictine monastery that is one of Hungary's oldest centers of learning and a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Restoration workers are removing about 100,000 handbound books from their shelves and carefully placing them in crates, the start of a disinfection process that aims to kill the tiny beetles burrowed into them, The Associated Press reported.

The drugstore beetle, also known as the bread beetle, is often found among dried foodstuffs like grains, flour and spices. But they also are attracted to the gelatin and starch-based adhesives found in books.

They have been found in a section of the library housing around a quarter of the abbey's 400,000 volumes.

“This is an advanced insect infestation which has been detected in several parts of the library, so the entire collection is classified as infected and must be treated all at the same time,” said Zsófia Edit Hajdu, the chief restorer on the project. “We've never encountered such a degree of infection before.”

The beetle invasion was first detected during a routine library cleaning.

Employees noticed unusual layers of dust on the shelves and then saw that holes had been burrowed into some of the book spines. Upon opening the volumes, burrow holes could be seen in the paper where the beetles chewed through.

The abbey at Pannonhalma was founded in 996, four years before the establishment of the Kingdom of Hungary. Sitting upon a tall hill in northwestern Hungary, the abbey houses the country's oldest collection of books, as well as many of its earliest and most important written records.

For over 1,000 years, the abbey has been among the most prominent religious and cultural sites in Hungary and all of Central Europe, surviving centuries of wars and foreign incursions such as the Ottoman invasion and occupation of Hungary in the 16th century.

Ilona Ásványi, director of the Pannonhalma Archabbey library, said she is “humbled” by the historical and cultural treasures the collection holds whenever she enters.

“It is dizzying to think that there was a library here a thousand years ago, and that we are the keepers of the first book catalogue in Hungary,” she said.

Among the library’s most outstanding works are 19 codices, including a complete Bible from the 13th century. It also houses several hundred manuscripts predating the invention of the printing press in the mid-15th century and tens of thousands of books from the 16th century.

While the oldest and rarest prints and books are stored separately and have not been infected, Ásványi said any damage to the collection represents a blow to cultural, historical and religious heritage.

“When I see a book chewed up by a beetle or infected in any other way, I feel that no matter how many copies are published and how replaceable the book is, a piece of culture has been lost,” she said.

To kill the beetles, the crates of books are being placed into tall, hermetically sealed plastic sacks from which all oxygen is removed. After six weeks in the pure nitrogen environment, the abbey hopes all the beetles will be destroyed.

Before being reshelved, each book will be individually inspected and vacuumed. Any book damaged by the pests will be set aside for later restoration work.

The abbey, which hopes to reopen the library at the beginning of next year, believes the effects of climate change played a role in spurring the beetle infestation as average temperatures rise rapidly in Hungary.

Hajdu, the chief restorer, said higher temperatures have allowed the beetles to undergo several more development cycles annually than they could in cooler weather.

“Higher temperatures are favorable for the life of insects,” she said. “So far we've mostly dealt with mold damage in both depositories and in open collections. But now I think more and more insect infestations will appear due to global warming.”

The library’s director said life in a Benedictine abbey is governed by a set of rules in use for nearly 15 centuries, a code that obliges them to do everything possible to save its vast collection.

“It says in the Rule of Saint Benedict that all the property of the monastery should be considered as of the same value as the sacred vessel of the altar,” Ásványi said. “I feel the responsibility of what this preservation and conservation really means.”