The Royal couple are standing in the back of a specially converted jeep as it drives past thousands of children gathered in Athletic Park. As their car passes the children they all swarm en masse to the other side of the field to get another look as the jeep turns a corner.
'To be invisible is to be forgotten,' constitutional theorist Walter Bagehot (1826–77) warned. For the King or Queen's New Zealand representative, the Governor-General, that meant hitting the road
For those New Zealanders old enough to have experienced it, the visit of the young Queen and her dashing husband, Prince Philip, to New Zealand in the summer of 1953-54, is a never-to-be forgotten event.
Following her stay in Auckland and her visits to Waitangi, Hamilton and Rotorua, the Queen and Duke had a break for five days at Lake Rotoiti, and then flew to Gisborne and Napier. The theme for the next few days was the pastoral productivity of New Zealand.
The constitutional arrangements of the British Empire changed greatly between the creation of the Imperial War Cabinet in 1917 and the passing of the Statute of Westminster in 1931.
As head of the Church of England she laid the foundation stone of the Anglican cathedral, and as head of the Commonwealth's armed forces she laid a wreath at the cenotaph. Such events emphasised the loyalty of New Zealanders to the British Empire and Commonwealth.
On the day of the reception for children at Athletic Park, the Evening Post wrote: 'As the mother of two young children 12,000 miles away, the Queen today assumed the role of mother to her wider family, and it was this maternal aspect that so caught the imagination and love of the New Zealand citizens of the future'.
On 30 January 1954 the Gothic sailed from Bluff and after a brief side trip into Milford Sound, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip departed for Australia. They have returned nine times since then.
The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Alfred, arrived in Wellington as captain of HMS Galatea. His was the first visit by a member of the Royal Family to New Zealand.
