Queen Elizabeth’s Former Private Secretary Says Australia Treated the Queen Like Taylor Swift: ‘It Was Electric’

Queen Elizabeth was actual royalty, but her former press secretary said her fame was comparable to pop music royalty.

Ailsa Andersen accompanied the monarch on what would become her final tour of Australia in October 2011, when Queen Elizabeth visited Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. Andersen told The Sun that the Queen was so popular Down Under that it was comparable to a singer beloved by many.

“I remember the crowds, the big Aussie barbeque in Perth, which was the last big event. It felt like the Queen was Taylor Swift,” Andersen said. “Honestly, the crowds were enormous — cheering. It was electric.”

The Queen first visited Australia in 1954, when she was just two years into what would become a historic 70-year reign that ended when she died on Sept. 8, 2022 at age 96. She would go on to visit the Commonwealth realm 14 more times before that final 2011 tour, bringing her total number of visits to 16.

Andersen pointed to “the crowds, the genuine people, just the adoration” that the Queen and her husband, Prince Philip, encountered when they visited the country.

“It was a real boost for the Queen and Prince Philip, because you never know how many people are going to be interested — but clearly they were,” she said.

The Queen’s son, King Charles, just wrapped up a six-day tour of Australia with wife Queen Camilla before heading to Samoa on Wednesday, Oct. 23 to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) 2024 there. This trip, which kicked off on Friday, Oct. 18, was Charles’ 17th visit Down Under and his first since 2018, when he and Camilla last visited to open the Commonwealth Games on the Queensland Gold Coast.

The King and Queen were met with large crowds while in Australia, where they visited both Sydney and Canberra. On Tuesday, Oct. 22, the Royal Family Instagram account captioned a photo of a crowd in Sydney, “Wow Sydney, what a turnout!” alongside a starry-eyed smile emoji and a heart hands emoji.

But the reception wasn’t 100% positive. In a shocking moment of the tour while in Canberra, lawmaker Lidia Thorpe, an Aboriginal Australian politician, confronted the King, 75, at the Australian Parliament on Monday, Oct. 21, yelling in part, “This is not your land. This is not your land. You are not my King, you are not our king,” according to videos taken from the event.

As PEOPLE previously reported, the King was reported to be unruffled by the protest, and Buckingham Palace spokespeople had no comment.

The protest came as debates continue as to whether King Charles should remain Australia’s head of state. Australia is one of 14 Commonwealth realms that still recognize Charles as their King, and Australia has flirted with becoming a republic as opposed to a constitutional monarchy for years, even putting the matter up for a vote in 1999, when Queen Elizabeth was very much still on the throne. The King recently reaffirmed the longstanding position of the monarchy, reinforcing that it is up to the people of any of the countries that have him as head of state to make the decision whether to retain him or not. Aides recently shared in a letter to the Australian Republic Movement (ARM) that “whether Australia becomes a republic is … a matter for the Australian public to decide.”

In addition to the protest in Canberra on Monday, the next day, Tuesday, Oct. 22, a statue in Sydney of King Charles’ great-great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, was vandalized with red paint just hours before the King made an appearance nearby.

A palace source pointed to the crowds that greeted King Charles and Queen Camilla, 77, saying the royal couple was “deeply grateful to the many thousands who turned out to support them, and are only sorry they didn’t have a chance to stop and talk to every single one. The warmth and scale of the reception was truly awesome.”

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Charles became only the second British monarch — and the first British King — to visit Australia. The first monarch to visit, of course, was his mother, Queen Elizabeth, when she visited for the first time 70 years ago. According to Australia’s Centre of Democracy, it’s estimated that close to 75% of Australia’s population saw her in person on that 1954 visit alone.

“Royal visits are a part of the history of national pride in Australia. This was especially the case for the 1954 tour,” according to the Centre. “For Australia, the visit was a chance to promote the post-war development of the country, while for the Crown, it was a chance to strengthen alliances throughout the Commonwealth countries.”