Harry opens up about his intrusive Aussie gap year
While opening up to London’s High Court as part of his phone hacking case against British tabloids, Prince Harry detailed his experiences in Australia in 2003 when the royal was in the country on his gap year.
The Duke of Sussex referenced two articles that were published at the time, alleging that private investigators had been hired by his family to keep an eye on him.
In his witness statement, he noted that a newspaper had run with the headline “Beach Bum Harry” for a story on his trip to a Noosa beach with some of his friends.
“It was a public beach, but not busy or popular so I’m unclear how anyone had known we were there, to be in the right place at the right time to take photographs. I wasn’t aware of anyone taking photographs at the time,’’ he explained, before sharing that locating the group would have been of a similar challenge level to “trying to find a needle in a haystack”.
But as the lawyer representing Mirror Group Newspapers pointed out, there was “no doubt that many photographers were prepared to look for that needle in a haystack”.
Harry had more to reveal from there, sharing his belief that the late Queen had sent “senior” members of Buckingham Palace’s aide team to monitor him while he was in Australia, all because of the “intrusion” of the paparazzi into his life.
“I only learnt recently that the Queen had asked one of her Assistant Private Secretaries to fly out to Noosa and take a house down the road from where I was staying,” he explained, “without me knowing.”
The second article was also released in 2003, and was one that claimed the young royal was “ready to quit Oz”. As Harry explained, it reported that he was “considering leaving Australia … because of the level of press intrusion I was experiencing.”
“The article includes a comment from a Palace spokesman expressing concern and disappointment about the treatment I was experiencing,” he said.
“I do recall that the Palace issued a statement, because the situation in Australia was awful for me and there was supposed to be an agreement that once I had done the press call on arrival, I would be left to get on with my gap year in private.
“I was a teenager, and this made it clear that there was nowhere in the world - not even the Australian outback - where I wouldn’t be hounded by the press or paparazzi.”
Images: Getty