On the third day of their private visit to Australia, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex Prince Harry and Meghan dived deep into the 60,000-year-long cultural history of Australia’s First Nations people during a guided walking tour through Melbourne’s most significant Indigenous heritage sites.
Led by local Indigenous knowledge-holders, the couple traced the banks of the Birrarung – the traditional First Nations name for what is now known as Melbourne’s Yarra River – starting the journey at the Koorie Heritage Trust located in the city’s Federation Square. The walking route, known as the Scar Tree Walk, is widely recognized as one of Melbourne’s most culturally important Indigenous heritage experiences, designed to connect visitors to the ongoing story of Australia’s first peoples.
During the tour, Harry and Meghan had the rare opportunity to examine and handle a Marngrook, a traditional handmade ball crafted from possum fur. Historians and Indigenous cultural leaders broadly believe this traditional object, used for centuries in First Nations communal games, is the original inspiration for the signature oval ball used in Australian Rules Football (AFL) – Australia’s most popular professional sport. The hands-on encounter came one day after Prince Harry joined an AFL team for a public training session to learn the fundamentals of the game, a connection Koorie Heritage Trust CEO Tom Mosby, a proud Kulkalgal and Kemer Kemer Meriam man, called deliberate and meaningful.
“The fact that the Duke yesterday was at a football club, I think it’s a really great connection,” Mosby told the BBC in an interview after the tour. Beyond the Marngrook demonstration, the couple explored a public art installation centered on Indigenous storytelling and learned how the Birrarung and its surrounding lands have served as a critical source of food, fishing, and hunting for First Nations traditional owners for millennia.
Mosby explained that the tour was designed to pull back the curtain on Melbourne’s layered history, showing that beneath the surface of one of the world’s most modern global cities lies a living, ongoing Indigenous connection to the land. “Melbourne is a contemporary urban place, but at the same time there is still a very strong connection by the Aboriginal people to this traditional country,” he added.
The conversation also turned to Victoria’s groundbreaking Treaty process, a landmark policy shift that made national history when the state passed Australia’s first formal legally recognized treaty with First Nations traditional owners just this year in 2025. Mosby noted that the couple expressed keen interest in learning about the treaty and its implications for Indigenous self-determination across Australia.
The couple’s low-key cultural outing drew spontaneous encounters with locals and tourists along the river. A Brazilian traveler, who was in Melbourne for her sister’s wedding and out for an early morning run, stumbled on the couple and called the meeting a warm, unexpected delight, describing them as “the most gorgeous couple.”
Local resident Narelle Zagami sought out the pair to greet them, saying she felt emotional meeting Harry and calling them “just beautiful people.” When asked about public criticism of the couple’s decision to mix charitable engagement with commercial activities during their private trip as non-working royals, Zagami pushed back, arguing that as private citizens, “They’ve got to make a living as well. It’s part of their life now, this sort of thing, so I think it’s good.”
Local Vita Benic, who also made a point to meet the couple, shared that she had previously waited to greet Harry’s father King Charles III, then Prince of Wales, and his first wife the late Princess Diana during their 1983 tour of Australia. Benic brought hand-selected children’s colouring books as gifts for Harry and Meghan’s two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, and said, “I just wanted to let them know what wonderful people they are… They’re the epitome of what a family should be.”
This trip marks Harry and Meghan’s first visit to Australia since 2018, just months after their royal wedding, when they drew massive crowds across a nine-day official working tour. This year’s visit is being conducted in a private capacity, blending charity appearances, cultural engagement, and commercial ventures. On the day before the cultural tour, Harry headlined the launch of a new report on father’s mental health, where he opened up about his own experiences as a parent and urged new generations to build better parenting legacies than the ones they inherited. He also paid his respects at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra earlier in the trip. Meanwhile, Meghan filmed a guest appearance as a judge on the upcoming episode of top-rated cooking competition MasterChef Australia, set to air on Sunday.