Hurley asks King about his health in emotional final overseas trip on duty (2024)

Normandy, France: After a decade of vice-regal service, David Hurley’s job is almost done. But his final trip overseas, his 19th as Australia’s Governor-General, was as moving as any that had come before.

On the beaches of Normandy he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, inquired as to the King’s health, shook hands with US President Joe Biden and embraced his host, French President Emmanuel Macron.

With less than a month before he passes the baton to Sam Mostyn and vacates Yarralumla, Hurley isn’t quite prepared to reflect properly on his time in the role. There are still people to meet and duties to be carried out.

The cancer-stricken King by the way? He’s going OK.

“He looks well, yeah ... we had a good chat,” Hurley, 70, said. “I think he was quite invigorated to be here ... meeting with the veterans and their families and so forth.

“He spoke very movingly about his grandfather [George VI], who obviously visited here shortly after the successful landings. To him, I think it was a strong connection.”

After a 42-year military career, Hurley was a student of D-Day military history but had never visited the northern shores of France. He walked the battlefields, laid wreaths and visited the graves of fallen Australian and Commonwealth soldiers.

“My generation grew up in the shadow of this ... the war was still very present in our family’s lives at the time,” Hurley said. “But to be able to come to Normandy and see this history ... the turning of the tide and out of the darkness comes this special moment in the liberation of Europe. It was very special.”

He said it was meeting those heroes of D-Day – the men who stormed the beaches to free France and then liberate Western Europe from tyranny – that was equal to any meeting over his time and he found it rather overwhelming.

“Every one of the veterans’ messages was about their mates,” Hurley, a former Defence Force chief, said. “Yes, President Macron and the King spoke brilliantly about the bigger picture, the war in Ukraine, but that’s what those veterans were focused on ... it was all about who were left behind. One fellow who came and talked about being on the soil ‘with my friends in the soil’. That was incredible.”

About 3300 Australians contributed directly to D-Day efforts. About 2800 Australian airmen from the Royal Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force provided crucial aerial support and about 500 sailors served on Royal Navy vessels supporting the invasion. Some died that day and many more in the days to follow.

June 1944 was the bloodiest month for the Australian airmen in the war in Europe. As Hurley said, Australia paid a lot of blood proportionately over that period.

He said the major anniversary was an important time to reflect on where the world was at, too, and the values Australia and its allies and partners hold dear.

“When people talk about what we’re defending and what, we think, is important – in some ways it’s a moot point whether we’ve managed it as well as we could have subsequently – but we’ve retained democratic rights, democratic countries and Western values and so on. A great foundation was laid here for us to work on.”

It’s been a decade now since Hurley retired from the ADF and took up the role as NSW governor. Now, almost five years after he was appointed as the 27th representative of the monarch of Australia, a quieter life beckons. And he’s thinking of growing a beard.

But is Hurley feeling overly sentimental in his final days?

“My wife would tell you I’m not a sentimental person,” he said. “It might be a big cliche, but it is a privilege and a real honour, and we’re just grateful for all the Australians that were able to meet in so many different circ*mstances.”

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Hurley said he had seen many Australians in their “really dark days” and then seen them “coming through again”.

“It’s people, the memories of people that for me has been the story of 10 years.

“At the moment, we’re just running to the finish line, and then we’ll take a breath, and I think many of the memories will come back.”

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