Queen Elizabeth II was so concerned about media coverage of Prince Harry's Australian "gap year" she secretly sent a royal staffer to stay down the road from him, the Duke of Sussex has claimed.
The revelation is one of several links to Australia contained in the royal's 55-page witness statement released on Tuesday as part of his lawsuit against the publisher of British tabloid the Daily Mirror.
The 38-year-old, who on Monday took the stand in a 132-year royal first to accuse Mirror Group Newspapers of phone hacking and other unlawful snooping, described his "situation" Down Under as "awful" and accused the group of paying to have him watched in the Hunter Valley.
The claims, most of which were addressed in Harry's memoir Spare, are just a handful of the accusations the prince made in a statement stretching to more than 25,000 words released as he faced cross-examination on Tuesday.
Of the 33 tabloid articles in question, three related to his time in Australia and a fourth referenced the former captain's early departure from a tour of Afghanistan due to an Australian magazine breaking an embargo, placing a "target on my head".
The first, published in the Mirror in September 2003, claimed Harry was considering leaving Australia because of press intrusion, and quoted a palace spokesperson "expressing concern and disappointment" about his treatment.
"I do recall that the Palace issued a statement because the situation in Australia was awful for me and there was supposed to be an agreement that once I had done the press call on arrival, I would be left to get on with my gap year in private," he wrote, referencing time he spent as a Jackaroo on Tooloombilla Station in south-west Queensland.
"I was a teenager, and this made it clear that there was nowhere in the world, not even the Australian outback, where I wouldn't be hounded by the press or paparazzi."
Harry claimed MGN was using "unlawful techniques" to snoop on him, referencing two payments — one of £100 referencing a new hairstyle and the other of £450 titled "Prince Harry watch Hunter Valley (Ellis)" — he said were made by the publisher about that time.
"These suggest to me that MGN were using unlawful techniques to gather information about me, with the second payment seeming to me like the Defendant was paying to have me watched," he said.
The duke also questioned how the paper was able to report that he was inside "watching videos", given the purpose of staying inside was to avoid the "suffocating" surveillance from camera crews outside.
"I was only in Australia with a couple of UK bodyguards, so this is the kind of thing I would have moaned about over the phone and in voicemails," he wrote.
The second article was published in November of the same year and detailed plans to spend Christmas in the UK before flying to South America to play polo and taking up a "proper job" before joining the military.
His "guess" was that £100 paid to a freelance journalist for the article "was for unlawfully obtained private information about me".
The third Australia-linked article forming part of the case was published in December 2003 after Harry had finished up on the outback station and taken a trip to the Sunshine Coast with friends.
"I remember this day so clearly, we were staying in a house and, after visiting Steve Irwin's crocodile zoo in the morning, we had gone out on to the beach in front of the house in the afternoon," he wrote.
"It was a public beach, but not busy or popular so I'm unclear how anyone had known we were there, to be in the right place at the right time to take photographs. I wasn't aware of anyone taking photographs at the time.
"I only learnt recently that the Queen had asked one of her assistant private secretaries to fly out to Noosa and take a house down the road from where I was staying, without me knowing.
"She was concerned about the extent of the coverage of my trip and wanted someone I knew to be nearby, in case I needed support."
Mirror Group Newspapers denies or hasn't admitted any of Harry's claims.
On Tuesday, the publisher's attorney, Andrew Green, told Harry in the courtroom that a spokesperson at the Palace had told reporters that Harry had been in Noosa, days before the article was published in various outlets.
More broadly, he asked Harry to identify what evidence he had of phone hacking in specific articles.
Harry repeatedly said he'd have to ask that question of the journalist who wrote it and continually insisted the manner in which information had been obtained was highly or incredibly suspicious.
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On Monday, Green said there was "simply no evidence capable of supporting the finding that the Duke of Sussex was hacked, let alone on a habitual basis".
Green's cross-examination of Harry was expected to continue throughout Tuesday afternoon (Wednesday morning AEST) and into Wednesday.
- Reported with Associated Press and CNN
