Prince Harry battled ‘relentless heat’ at Australian home ‘double the size of Balmoral’

Living abroad doesn’t faze Prince Harry, with the royal setting up his home in Montecito, California with his wife, Meghan Markle, after they stepped back as senior royals in 2020.

Years before his trans-Atlantic move, he temporarily relocated to Australia aged 19. Fresh out of Eton College, Harry joined his late mother Princess Diana’s close friend Annie Hill and her husband Noel on Tooloombilla farm in Queensland, where he spent nine weeks becoming a “summer jackaroo.”

Opening up about his home in Australia, he admitted in his autobiography Spare that the lifestyle was the antithesis of what he had been used to in the UK – especially when it came to the “boiling Australian sun.”

“I came from a green place. The Hills’ farm was an ode to brown. I came from a place where every move was monitored, catalogued, and subjected to judgment. The Hills’ farm was so vast and remote that no one would see me for most of each day but [Annie’s son] George. And the odd wallaby.

“Above all, I came from a place that was temperate, rainy, cool. The Hills’ farm was hot,” he began, before joking: “How was I supposed to put up with an oven inside a blast furnace inside a nuclear reactor set on top of an active volcano?” While the UK is currently experiencing a scorching heatwave, with record-breaking May temperatures of 34.8°C, this still pales in comparison to Queensland, which regularly exceeds 45°C in summer

Set on 40,000 acres, the farm was “double the size of Balmoral”, Prince Harry noted. Unlike King Charles’ Scottish residence, which features a 24-metre clock tower and a grand ballroom, his accommodation was far more modest. 

Harry described Annie and Noel’s home as “a sweet little bungalow with white clapboard, wooden steps leading to a wide porch.”

He continued: “The door had a tight screen, to keep out mosquitoes, which were big as birds. That first night, sitting over dinner, I couldn’t hear anything but the rhythmic slap of bloodsuckers against mesh.”

© Tim Graham Photo Library via Get

After weeks of “relentless work” and “relentless heat”, intruders began to break onto the farm in a bid to catch a glimpse of the royal’s rural Australian lifestyle, prompting him to move back to the UK in time for Christmas in 2003. 

Despite his candid comments about the weather, Harry looks back fondly on his time with the Hills on their vast Australian farm. “I thanked them for nine of the best weeks of my life, and flew home, arriving just before Christmas,” he concluded.

Harry’s American lifestyle

© AFP via Getty Images

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex purchased the Chateau of Riven Rock for $14.65 million in 2020, but it is now estimated to be worth an impressive $29 million. They live there with their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.

The property features a home cinema room, a master suite with a balcony overlooking the breathtaking views, an impressive over-water tea room and two interconnected palm trees in the garden that hold a sentimental meaning for the couple.

Meghan revealed all when speaking to The Cut. “One of the first things my husband saw when we walked around the house was those two palm trees. See how they’re connected at the bottom? He goes, ‘My love, it’s us.’  And now every day when Archie goes by us, he says, ‘Hi, Momma. Hi, Papa.'”