From her face on stamps, coins and bank notes, to portraits in schools, the Christmas message and swearing in ceremonies, the Queen has been part of Australians everyday lives since becoming monarch in 1952.
Her portrait is hung in Parliament and emblazoned across government imagery, featuring most prominently in daily life on the Australian $5 note.
Politicians, governors general and governors swear allegiance to her, and as the longest serving monarch to Britain and the Commonwealth, she is a constant in the everyday workings of our nation.
She features on our passports, on which it is printed that ‘the Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia being the representative in Australia of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second’ requests for all citizens to be allowed ‘to pass freely without let or hindrance’.
Many Australians have known no other royal ruler, and every new Australian gaining citizenship is legally entitled to a special portrait of Her Majesty after becoming a constituent.
In it, Queen Elizabeth II wears the ‘wattle spray’ brooch then prime minister Robert Menzies gave her on her first royal visit to Australia in 1954, and which she has worn since to Australian and Commonwealth events.
Each year we get a day off in honour of her birthday and on December 25 it is an Australian tradition to watch the Queen’s Christmas message, in which she makes observations about the past year and the trials and tribulations of her subjects in the Commonwealth’s 54 countries.
But now that Queen Elizabeth II has died aged 96, bringing to an end the 70-year reign of Britain and the Commonwealth’s longest serving monarch, that will all now change.
It’s an Australian tradition to sit down on the evening of December 25 and watch the Queen’s televised Christmas message and this year King Charles III’s first message will no doubt reflect on his mother’s death and her extraordinary reign
Australia Post marked the Queen’s platinum Jubilee with stamps (above) and will do so with her passing and to mark the succession of King Charles III
The Queen’s face has endured through redesigns of the $5 note and although these notes will remain legal tender they will be gradually phased and replaced with King Charles III image
Some of the changes will be immediate, some will happen after a 28-day period of mourning, with other things changing more gradually.
With the immediate proclamation of Charles as the king on the Queen’s death, new coins and bank notes will be minted bearing his face.
The new cash will be minted and distributed into general circulation, with the old money bearing the Queen’s image still legal tender but gradually being phased out.
New passports issued will bear the words ‘His Majesty King Charles the Third’, but existing passports will remain legal until their expiry.
All swearing in ceremonies will have to be altered to acknowledge allegiance to King Charles III.
To this day, NSW Police Force officers have sworn to ‘well and truly serve our Sovereign Lady the Queen as a police officer without favour or affection, malice or ill-will until I am legally discharged, that I will cause Her Majesty’s peace to be kept and preserved’.
Each Australian passport bearing the words ‘Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second’ will remain valid until expiry but new passports will have ‘His Majesty King Charles the Third’
The Queen’s image on the obverse of Australian coins has aged with her and though the coins will remain in use they will gradually be replaced with coins bearing her son’s face
An estimation of an Australian 20 cent coin with King Charles II’s face on the obverse side
One immediate change will be in court documents, although the ‘R v’ initials won’t change they will represent in full ‘Rex versus (the defendant)’ rather than ‘Regina’, both Latin names for male or female monarchs
In court rooms across Australia cases have been mounted against offenders using the Latin name for the Queen, ‘Regina’ versus the defendant.
The lettering will remain ‘R v’, but the initial will now stand for the Latin word for king, which is ‘Rex’.
One of the major changes in Australia – along with other sovereign nations – will be that Queen’s birthday public holiday vacated in favour of what will now be called the King’s birthday long weekend.
The date – which is currently the second Saturday of June, except in Queensland and Western Australia, and was moved from the Queen’s April birthday back in 1959 – could also be revised as November-born King Charles III ascends the throne.
When prime ministers are sworn in by governors-general (above Anthony Albanese with Australia C-G David Hurley in May) they will swear allegiance to ‘His Majesty King Charles III’ from now on
The Queen, above at the microphone at Sandringham House as she delivered her first Christmas message in 1952, which has become a tradition televised through the Commonwealth that Charles will continue
Every new Australian citizen has a legal right to a portrait of the monarch and the photo of the Queen (above wearing the wattle brooch given her on her first Australian tour) will be replaced by an image of Charles III
Although Charles has the choice of selecting the date, he may continue with the same date nominated by his mother.
Whatever the monarch decides it will impinge on more than a long weekend, as each year the monarch’s birthday honours list is announced to award exceptional Australians and in some Commonwealth nations, appointing individuals into national or dynastic orders.
Australia Post, which issued a special stamp for the Queen’s platinum Jubilee, is expected to produce a stamp honouring her passing, and one to mark the succession of of her son Charles.
Australian military uniforms, which have borne the crowns or cyphers of British monarchs including Queen Victoria and King George V, and his daughter – Queen Elizabeth II – will now be decorated with a new symbol fashioned specially for King Charles III.
The changes to Australian currency and customs have been in planning stages for some time, and the Federal Government and its agencies will announce them once the formal period of mourning for Queen Elizabeth II comes to an end.
And this year, we will hear King Charles III’s first Christmas message in which he will no doubt reflect on his mother’s death and her extraordinary reign.
Charles will next tour Australia as the king, with his Queen Consort Camilla and when Prince William next tours he will do so in his father’s inherited title, as Duke of Cornwall.
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