Meghan has hit a new low with her paid-for ‘girls’ weekend’ in Sydney. But there’s another unforgivable sin Australians won’t soon forget: AMANDA GOFF

I fell in love with many things about Australia when I first moved here from London 20 years ago: the beaches, the sun, the coffee – and, of course, Aussies themselves. 

In particular, I’m enamoured by their ability to sniff out bulls*** faster than you can say ‘Crocodile Dundee’.

Australians are known for wrestling crocs with one hand and holding a VB in the other – but what impresses me most is their sharp radar for anything staged, insincere or fake.

And you know by now, I have very little patience for fakery myself.

If there’s one thing Australians struggle to stomach, it’s someone who has zero authenticity, and, in my opinion, few in the public eye encapsulate that better than the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle – who this week stunned our nation by announcing she would be the star guest at a $3,199-per-head ‘weekend retreat’ for just 300 lucky ladies at the Intercontinental Sydney in Coogee Beach.

Please. Aren’t these ‘celebrity holidays’ just Cameo clips for rich people? What a breathtaking fall from grace for a member of the Royal Family. What next, will she announce a return to Deal or No Deal?

But I digress… 

Back to the subject at hand: Meghan’s image problem Down Under. 

While Aussies don’t exactly tip their Bunnings hats and sing God Save The King before they tuck into their Vegemite toast every morning, most of us don’t think the royals are half bad.

We certainly don’t want, ahem, a president, and given the Labor government’s failed referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, now’s hardly the time to put a national vote to banish the Crown.

But, like I’ve said, Aussies can’t stand bulls***. So I don’t think I was the only one in this sunburnt country who rolled my eyes when it was announced that Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, would be visiting us in a matter of weeks to ‘take part in a number of private, business and philanthropic engagements’. 

Really? Surely they’re not expecting us to roll out the red carpet again? After all, their last visit back in 2018 ended on rather a bitter note.

Back then, we were naïve and hopeful, even a tiny bit starstruck, desperately hoping that the Hollywood-meets-royalty fairytale couple would be the monarchy’s glimmer of hope as it began to feel increasingly outdated and remote on our far-flung shores.

We lined the streets with flags and cheers, eager for a glimpse of the elegant Meghan and the charming, irrepressible Harry. At last, the monarchy had a modern, exciting couple to represent its future!

Meghan hugged fans. Harry joked with the crowds. The couple were pictured outside our iconic Opera House and barefoot on our golden beaches. They cuddled koalas! Australians fell in love.

And then, days into the tour came the announcement that Meghan was pregnant with Archie – and didn’t that just make the visit feel even more special?

Only, we later learned, all was not as it seemed. 

In fact, the ‘perfect tour’ was little more than smoke and mirrors. Later reports revealed it had actually exposed early warning signs that things were going off the rails behind the scenes at the Firm.

In his damning book Courtiers, royal correspondent Valentine Low detonated Meghan’s squeaky-clean reputation in a few hundred pages, claiming relations between the couple and palace staff began to crumble during that time, with aides allegedly jokingly referring to themselves as the ‘Sussex Survivors Club’.

Low also reported that Meghan wanted to know why she wasn’t being paid for her duties on the tour, including walkabouts and handshaking. 

Did she not read the ‘How to Be a Royal’ guidebook before walking down the aisle to marry a prince?

The Mail’s Rebecca English also reported witnessing a tense exchange during the Fiji leg of the tour, where Meghan was said to have ‘turned and hissed’ at a female aide who was later seen with ‘tears running down her face.’

It wasn’t a great look, was it?  

There were also reports of Harry becoming fixated on media coverage about his wife at about this time, scouring the press for anything negative. 

Then everything unravelled when the couple did the unthinkable – they went to war with the Windsors. They took on the Queen herself, signing up for a bombshell tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey, where they accused the royals of racism, cruelty and indifference to Meghan’s mental health, all while insisting on ‘privacy’.

(I should add, on a personal note, I will never, ever forgive Meghan for her mock re-enactment of her first curtsy to the Queen in that insufferable Netflix documentary).

Of course, Meghan has every right to speak her mind, and if her mental health suffered during her time as a royal, she deserves compassion. But the tearful Oprah interview didn’t feel heartfelt – not to me, at least. It seemed like a calculated, choreographed attack on the ageing Queen Elizabeth II.

And I suspect most Australians and their bulls*** detectors would agree.

Because here’s the thing: most Aussies I know are Elizabethans first and royalists second. Even those with sympathy for the republican cause acknowledge her lifetime of selfless duty and genuine affection for the Commonwealth.

While Britons remain hostile to Harry and Meghan for turning on the Royal Family and ‘the Firm’, Australians tend instead to feel a quiet sorrow that their choices so deeply wound the late Queen.

That’s the scar that hasn’t healed. 

That Meghan and Harry caused such pain to the Queen in her final years – compelling her, at 94, to release the now‑famous ‘recollections may vary’ statement, laden with sadness – remains impossible to excuse.

It’s unforgivable. And did they truly imagine we’d forget? 

If you’re shaking your head and calling me a bitter old royalist, let me share a quick encounter I had today at my local café.

Chatting with a bloke about Harry and Meghan’s return to Australia, he rolled his eyes and said Aussies have no time for Meghan any more.

Then he showed me a black-and-white photo on his phone – a framed picture of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip he’d snapped in a hotel in Fiji where he’d stayed.

‘Now, they were class,’ he said, gazing at the couple with a smile.

And in that moment, it hit me.

Australians might not bow to royalty, but we respect loyalty, dignity and service – and we can spot nonsense a mile off.

So Meghan and Harry – we won’t be rolling out the red carpet for you. And don’t expect forgiveness either.