King’s College Choir Tour to Australia – Summer 2024
Shortly after the end of a busy term, the choristers, senior probationers, and four members of School staff departed for Australia for a three week Choir tour. We flew out of London Heathrow on 17th July, bound for Singapore and then Melbourne.
After a very sleepy first day in Melbourne, on which the biggest struggle for many of the boys was staying awake, the tour began in earnest. Over the course of the next few days we visited the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Ballarat Wildlife Park, and the Australian Centre of the Moving Image (ACMI). It wasn’t all activities and outings, however; concert rehearsals soon began and the Choir performed in two separate concerts at Hamer Hall and the Melbourne Recital Centre.
After Melbourne, we headed to Brisbane. Our accommodation was slightly out of the city, and the boys thoroughly enjoyed having plenty of green space to play football, basketball, as well as indulge in their newfound love of Australian Football League! Following a third, wonderful concert at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, we flew to Sydney for an extended stay.
Our time in Sydney was filled with memorable experiences. For many of us, one of the highlights of the tour was the time we spent learning about the history and culture of Australia as we discovered more about the First Nations people of the country we were in. We had the chance to meet an artist who specialised in Aboriginal art, as well as the composer of one of the pieces the Choir was performing at each concert – ‘Charlotte’ – which explored the composer’s own personal journey into her family and ancestry. It was enlightening to have several such experiences throughout the tour, and most notably in Sydney, where we took a walk around a notable headland and learnt more about the land.
The Choir also performed at both the Sydney Recital Hall and the Sydney Opera House; the latter was a particular stand-out moment for many of us, and not an experience that will soon be forgotten!
As we began the latter half of the tour, we flew to Adelaide and were delighted to find that our accommodation was a beautiful retreat in the foothills surrounding the city, from which the view of Adelaide itself at sunset was jaw-dropping. We visited the world-famous Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, and had a wonderful time feeding kangaroos! After two concerts at the Adelaide Town Hall, we headed to Canberra.
Canberra was cold! The Choir performed at the Llewellyn Recital Centre in the city, and we were delighted to be able to reunite with two former King’s Gap Students there too, but it was a short-lived stay and it wasn’t long before we were headed to the final stop of our Australian odyssey: Perth.
After chilly Canberra, Perth seemed positively tropical. The boys thoroughly enjoyed having lots more green space to run around in at our accommodation, as well as an ‘end-of-tour’ BBQ on the final day with the choral scholars and lay clerks too. From there, we headed to the Perth Concert Hall for our final concert, and from there, we began to make the long journey back to Cambridge.
Three weeks. Six cities. Nine concerts. The tour was a wonderful success, and the seventeen boys who came away with me, Mrs Williams, Mrs Day, and Mr Rist were a pleasure to spend time with. The trip was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for many of us, and it was fantastic to achieve so much in such a short space of time.
Mr Sykes
.