'Sorry, you are too late'

Wills rejects Australia girl's marriage proposal

Wills rejects Australia girl's marriage proposal

Prince William's tour of New Zealand continued with a visit to Victoria, where he left at least one broken heart in his wake.



As the royal met scores of well-wishers outside the Memorial Hall in Kerang, a town of 3,800 that was cut off from the outside world by floodwaters for seven days, he passed Tiana O'Brien (17) and her schoolmate Ayla

Fenton (17), who had made a sign for the event reading: "I'll be your princess." When he got close enough to hear him, O'Brien called out "Marry me."

"Sorry, you're too late," he replied with a smile. O'Brien was likely to be one of the only people to have met the Prince during his trip to Australia and leave disappointed.

After he toured Queensland towns hit by deadly flash floods on Sunday, the Courier Mail declared "he came, he saw, he charmed their bloody socks off."

The story was the same yesterday, when the Prince moved on to the south-eastern state of Victoria, where dozens of rural towns were inundated by slowly rising floodwaters earlier this year.


Carriage Restorer Dave Evans cleans the 1902 State Landau carriage at the Royal Mews in London.
The coach will carry William and Kate on their wedding day if the weather is good

Inside a marquee on the Murrabit sports field, the Prince sat down with locals whose farms had been flooded.

As he listened to the story of the Griffiths family, whose pig farm was inundated for weeks, he said the images
were awful.

"It's so sad you're having to show me pictures of your houses in the water, rather than happy family snaps," he said to Rod Griffiths (43).