Excited crowds have greeted the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on the first day of a visit to Australia, despite an air of controversy surrounding the former royal couple.
Families and youngsters clamoured inside the foyer at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital on Tuesday morning as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle made a much-anticipated appearance.
The pair shook hands with dozens of well-wishers and took time to speak and take pictures with young patients and their parents, offering hugs and waves to others.
It was an exciting morning for four-year-old oncology patient Lily, who spoke with and got a selfie taken with both royals.
"They said 'nice to meet you Lily', and I just gave Meghan some flowers," she told AAP.
"They were friendly and they were very, very nice to me."
The hospital was first visited by Queen Elizabeth II in 1963 and by Princess Diana and then-prince Charles in 1985.
Dressed to impress, Meghan favoured Australian designers on the first day of the visit, stepping out in a sleeveless Navy dress by Karen Gee before trading her outfit for a more casual look in a khaki bomber jacket and suede skirt by Australian label St Agni.
After the hospital, the Duke and Duchess toured a centre delivering support to women and children experiencing family violence and homelessness.
Meghan donned an apron and served frittata to people at the centre, run by McAuley Community Services for Women.
After serving several people, the Duchess sat down at a table and joined people eating food, telling them: "We landed here this morning so my jet lag hasn't quite hit yet."
Outside the Australian National Veterans Arts Museum, there were cheers from a small crowd gathered for the couple's arrival.
The Duke and Duchess donned aprons as they joined a pottery class with the children of veterans, with Meghan crafting a clay ostrich.
When asked what his clay creation was, Harry replied: "It's a one-winged kookaburra. It's very rare."
The museum is a veteran-led charity dedicated to supporting the wellbeing of current and former Australian military personnel and their families through the arts.
Outside the museum, the crowd grew as word spread and by the time the couple emerged, a black SUV had pulled up, briefly blocking traffic as it waited to take them away.
A car honked until a person in the crowd shouted: "It's the royals."
Other planned appearances are decidedly more commercial.
Organisers of a three-day women's retreat say Meghan will headline the exclusive event - pitched as a "girls weekend like no other" - while Harry is set to deliver a keynote speech on workplace mental health at a Melbourne summit.
Tickets to the retreat start at $2699, while in-person attendance at the summit will set punters back about $1000 or more.
The privately funded trip is not an official royal tour, with the couple no longer working members of the royal family after renouncing their status and moving to the US in 2020.
Giselle Bastin, a Flinders University associate professor and expert on the British royal family, said the decision to use their titles to pursue private interests would be perceived by many as a conflict of interest.
"Staging of a quasi-royal tour to Australia is being regarded as a rather desperate attempt to monetise their status as royalty," she told AAP.
Adding to the shift in public sentiment has been police confirmation taxpayers will cover additional security costs and public safety operations, contradicting repeated assurances from the couple's team that the visit would be entirely privately funded.
An online petition calling for Australian taxpayers not to foot the bill has attracted more than 45,000 signatures.
With PA
