Prince Harry says he needed to ‘cleanse myself of my previous’ earlier than having kids as he admits ‘struggles’ of being a father and ‘disconnection’ to Archie throughout discuss on second day of Australian quasi royal tour

Prince Harry today revealed the ‘struggles’ of being a father and the ‘disconnection’ he felt towards his son Archie while his wife Meghan Markle was pregnant.

The Duke of Sussex told an audience that he knew he ‘had stuff from the past that I needed to deal with’ before having children, as he discussed experiences of therapy.

Harry made the comments while giving a talk on stage at an event about fatherhood hosted by Movember this morning during his visit to Melbourne in Australia.

The Duke said he had to prepare himself to ‘basically cleanse myself of the past’, also explained he wanted his children Archie and Lilibet to be ‘an upgrade’ of himself.

Harry was without Meghan at the event, who is with him on the trip but has no scheduled public appearances today. Archie and Lilibet are at home in California.

He met with supporters of the men’s health charity at the Whitten Oval, the training and administrative headquarters of Australian rules football club Western Bulldogs.

Harry was presented with personalised Western Bulldogs miniature shirts with Archie and Lilibet’s names printed on the back after arriving at the stadium.

While discussing his therapy before his children were born, Harry said: ‘Certainly from a therapy standpoint, you want to be the best version of yourself for your kids.

‘And I knew that I had stuff from the past that I needed to deal with, and therefore prepare myself to basically cleanse myself of the past.’

In a discussion on stage with Movember’s global director of men’s health research Dr Zac Seidler, the Duke said there were ‘conversations that are now happening in households between kids and parents that never existed between me and my parents’.

He spoke about the evolving roles of parents, telling the guests: ‘From my perspective, our kids are our upgrade.

‘That’s not how I was taught but that was my take on it – not to say I was an upgrade of my dad or that my kids are an upgrade of me.

‘That’s the approach that I take, to know that with the world the way that it goes, the kids that we bring up in today’s world need to be an upgrade.’

The Duke said there could be a ‘disconnection’ in the early days of fatherhood, adding ‘certainly I felt a disconnection because my wife was the one creating life, and I was there to witness it’.

Wearing a taupe shirt and jeans, Harry said: ‘I think for many guys, you try to think about what service can I provide at this point, because my work here is done to some extent.

‘And then when it comes back around again, I think the biggest tip that I was given, actually, from my therapist in the UK, was just be aware of how you feel once the baby is born.’

‘Every single time I went to work and I came back – if I was stressed, the moment that I held Archie, he would start crying.’

He added: ‘Fatherhood is the most important and sort of transformational role that a guy can ever, can ever move into.’

Harry also told the audience of Movember supporters and their children that ‘I’m fortunate enough to be able to work from home’.

Giving a talk at a function room of the stadium, he said: ‘During Covid, it was like, well, this working from home thing is really not great when you have like small kids running around, jumping into your meetings.’

Harry then took to the Aussie rules football pitch and had a kickabout with Western Bulldogs players Tom Liberatore, Adam Treloar and Matthew Kennedy in his Chelsea boots, while discussing the differences between the sport and rugby.

The Duke looked delighted and beamed as he ran across the pitch to have a kickabout with children, telling one boy: ‘Good kick man’ and ‘it’s a slippery ball that’.

He also posed for photographs while holding a Western Bulldogs scarf.

Harry also witnessed John Pearce (John Wiggle) and Lachlan Gillespie (Lachy Wiggle) from Australian children’s music group The Wiggles perform on the pitch and gave a little wiggle of his own in response.

The Movember movement, founded in Melbourne in 2003, is a global charity focused on improving men’s health, particularly in relation to mental health, suicide prevention, prostate cancer and testicular cancer.

The campaign, which involves men growing moustaches during the month of November to raise awareness, has raised hundreds of millions of pounds across more than 20 countries – with ‘Mo’ commonly used in Australia as slang for moustache.

In the afternoon, Harry was welcomed by Indigenous veterans upon arriving at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and wafted smoke as part of a ceremony.

Harry took part in the smoking ceremony at the site’s For Our Country memorial, which recognises and commemorates the military service and experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their legacy.

The duke laid a wreath at the memorial and took part in the ceremony, where he wafted smoke from a fire pit containing burning leaves as members of the public watched on and police patrolled the site.

After being welcomed by Indigenous veterans on Wednesday afternoon, Harry listened to a Welcome to Country address by the memorial’s Indigenous liaison officer Michael Bell, a Ngunnawal/Gomeroi man.

Wearing a suit and his military medals, the duke was shown a gallery dedicated to Captain Reg Saunders, who in 1945 became the first Indigenous Australian to be commissioned as an officer into the Australian Army.

Harry, who was not accompanied by the Duchess of Sussex, travelled from Melbourne to Canberra in the front row of a commercial Qantas flight, to the surprise of cabin crew who looked delighted to have the duke on board.

Stunned members of the public waved and said ‘Hi Harry’ as he left Canberra Airport on a gloriously sunny day in the capital.

Following a reinterpretation of the legal constraints on the Australian War Memorial’s scope, the Australian Frontier Wars between Indigenous Australians and mostly British settlers are to be included for the first time as part of a gallery planned to open in 2028.

The first conflicts of the Frontier Wars took place several months after the landing of the First Fleet in January 1788, and the last conflicts occurred in the early 20th century, following the federation of the Australian colonies in 1901.

The memorial had previously argued that frontier fighting in Australia was outside its charter, as it did not involve Australian military forces.

This position received criticism from historians, who argued that such fighting should be commemorated at the memorial because it involved large numbers of Indigenous Australians and paramilitary or government-backed colonial forces.

In September 2022, the memorial’s outgoing chairman, Brendan Nelson, announced it would work towards ‘a much broader, much deeper depiction and presentation of the violence committed against Indigenous people’.

The Australian War Memorial is the nation’s principal memorial to those who have served and died in war and on operational service, combining a shrine, museum, and archive.

Opened in 1941, it stands as both a place of remembrance and a centre for preserving Australia’s military history.

The Memorial features galleries dedicated to the world wars, with more than 1.4 million Australians serving in the armed forces across the First and Second World Wars.

More than 60,000 Australians died in the First World War, including thousands in the Gallipoli campaign to seize control of the Dardanelles from the Ottoman Empire.

Around one million Australians served in the Second World War, representing a massive mobilisation from a relatively small population.

All personnel of the Australian Defence Force swear an oath or make an affirmation of allegiance to the King in his role as the Australian monarch, pledging to serve Australia and, in the oath, to ‘resist His enemies’.