King Charles III and Queen Camilla will visit Australia and Samoa next October, where they will take part in a Commonwealth summit. The news was confirmed on Monday by Buckingham Palace, which also reported that this trip by the British sovereign and his wife will not go through New Zealand, as initially planned, since the medical team accompanying the monarch – who is receiving treatment for cancer – is advised against travelling abroad for any period of time.

“In close consultation with the Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand, and with due regard to time and logistical pressures, it was agreed to limit the visit to Samoa and Australia only,” the Palace said in a statement.

This will be Charles III’s first visit to Australia since his accession to the throne and it comes on a special date: 30 years ago, in 1994, also in that country, the current king, then Prince of Wales, suffered an attack, an event that becomes a source of greater curiosity after the attack on Donald Trump this weekend and the recovery of other assassination attempts on heads of state throughout history.

The attacker will be arrested after the attempted murder of Carlos, on January 26, 1994 © Getty Images taken from a television broadcast

On January 26 of that year, during a visit to Darling Harbour in Sydney to celebrate Australia Day, Queen Elizabeth II’s eldest son was almost attacked. Charles III was then 45 years old and was about to present prizes to a group of children, an event attended by around 20,000 people.

Among the crowd was David Kang, a 23-year-old man who walked onto the stage at Tumbalong Park brandishing a gun and pointed it at the prince. However, he stumbled and was immediately immobilized. Charles, on the other hand, was always calm, so much so that the Daily Mail later dubbed him “His Royal Coolness.”

A replica of the weapon used by the attacker © Getty Images

Ian Kiernan, who helped restrain Kang and was named Australian of the Year, said the crown prince compared the attack he suffered that day to that of an elephant in Kenya. “Prince Charles was fantastic. It was cold as a cucumber,” Kiernan told Reuters at the time.

The attacker, meanwhile, said he only wanted to raise awareness of the plight of Cambodian refugees who arrived in the country by boat in the late 1980s and early 1990s seeking asylum after being sent to detention centres. Kang also told the Sydney Morning Herald that he suffered from depression. The man was found guilty of threatening unlawful violence and sentenced to 500 hours of community service, the publication said.

David Kang was 23 when he tried to shoot the then Prince of Wales © Getty Images

And what has become of David Kang 30 years after the incident?

Kang is now a lawyer and continues to deny trying to kill the then crown prince. In 2005, when Charles returned to the country – the first time since the attack – Kang gave an interview to the Morning Herald, where he referred to the episode he experienced 11 years earlier as “traumatic”.

“What happened 11 years ago was an extremely traumatic experience. I moved on with my life and became a lawyer here in Sydney,” Kang said. “I don’t want to bring back those memories. Thinking about it disturbs me. What happened at that time was extremely traumatic and the effect it had on my family was deeply disturbing.”

In 2024, the next trip of Charles III and Camilla to Oceania is expected to be more relaxed. According to the BBC, in Australia the royal couple will visit the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales. In Samoa, the kings will participate in the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which brings together delegations from the 56 countries that make up the intergovernmental organisation.

More information will be released soon about this, which is the first trip abroad since Charles III was diagnosed with cancer in January this year. It should be remembered that the British monarchs were last in Australia in 2018, to attend the Commonwealth Games, which took place on the Gold Coast.

In the photo gallery above, see some of Carlos’ stops on his 1994 trip to Australia.