The Governor-General continued: "May King Charles III have long and happy years to reign over us. With hearty and humble affection, we promise him faith and faithfulness."

For how long is now the big question.

The Australian Republic Movement thinks the foundations for a vote to cut short his Australian reign can be laid in the remaining two and a half years of the Labor government (the Prime Minister has said there will not be a referendum in his first term - and, of course, there's no guarantee he will get a second term).

And anyway, at the moment, there are barriers to ditching the king as head of state - like the current view of the voters.

READ MORE:

It's true that a poll taken on September 12 found "a resounding majority of Australians want to retain the monarchy rather than become a republic" but that was three days after the Queen had died.

More worrying for republicans is that the pro-monarchy pattern seems entrenched. In every similar poll since 2010, more have said they think "Australia should remain a monarchy" than those who said it shouldn't.

Even in 1999, when voters in the actual referendum rejected the change, the opinion poll had more than half (54 per cent) of its respondents saying Australia should cease being a monarchy. The opinion poll indicated the opposite result from the real poll.

So don't take much notice of polls - though the latest did give some useful indicators: "The main reasons provided by people for why Australia should remain as a monarchy are 'Why change?'," as the pollster Michele Levine of Roy Morgan put it. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" was a frequent response.

"I don't see any easy road ahead," Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History at the ANU, said.

"Even if there is a shift in public opinion towards the idea of a republic, as there might be, the problem of the detail will remain a barrier, as it did in 1999. In my view, any method of selection that doesn't involve some kind of popular vote will never gain majority support.

"On the other hand, there are many republicans - some very well-placed in terms of access to public platforms - who believe popular election will undermine or even undo parliamentary democracy. These differences could not be bridged in 1998-99.

"I remain to be convinced they can be almost a quarter of a century on."

He is also sceptical about the Prime Minister's decision not to have a republic referendum in his first term. There was, Professor Bongiorno thought, a "tradition whereby politicians proclaim the republic inevitable while always finding reasons to put it off until the week after never".

Maybe Mr Albanese is being canny. Labor's priority is constitutional recognition for Indigenous people, with the Voice to Parliament. The republic will come after that. Or so we're told.

When - and if - the republic referendum eventually happens, there are factors which may push the result either way.

There is royal hoopla still to come. The coronation of King Charles will no doubt be spectacular, the investiture of William as Prince of Wales probably less so because of some antipathy to the idea in Wales itself.

And there will no doubt be a royal visit to Australia, either by the King and the Queen Consort (to give Camilla her formal title) or by the Prince of Wales and his highly telegenic wife, Catherine, Princess of Wales (as she now is).

Republicans would be foolish to underestimate the ability of the monarchy to reinvent itself. Since his mother's death, King Charles has already seemed more adept than his critics might have expected - he's not as daft as he's been portrayed, as you might think.

But, on the other hand, the King is a controversial figure. He was unfaithful to his first wife.

Princess Diana, you remember, said (looking up, straight at the camera, from under her eyelashes): "There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded."

It has never been learnt exactly how a tape of a private conversation between Prince Charles, as he was, and Camilla, as she was, came into the hands of a British tabloid newspaper.

Under the headline "Charles and Camilla", the six-minute conversation of the greatest sexual intimacy was published in excruciating detail. Long-time lovers fantasised about what they would like to do with each other, and the mystique of monarchy was well and truly punctured.

In 2015, a cache of letters he wrote to British ministers ten years earlier was revealed. The 27 memos showed the king-to-be asking the prime minister, Tony Blair, to take action on a range of causes, from doing more to protect British troops in Iraq to making "alternative" medicine more available.

He had conservative views on architecture. His views on medicines were lampooned. A priest in the Catholic Herald wrote: "Far more disturbing are Charles's frankly loopy ideas about complementary medicine."

In 1986, he said: "I just come and talk to the plants, really - very important to talk to them, they respond."

This was widely ridiculed. It turned him into something of a figure of fun among those not well disposed towards him anyway.

It wasn't the causes themselves which were the problem, but that the heir apparent was trying to exert political influence.

It was all very different from the way his mother behaved.

READ MORE:

In contrast to Prince Charles, the private views of the Queen remain unknown, even after 70 years of her reign.

When she gave a speech, it had been drafted to create an effect. It was part of government policy.

In 2011, for example, she spoke at Dublin Castle (where Irish republicans were held before being executed by the British a century earlier).

She used a phrase in the Irish language, and the effect was utterly transformative. It helped reconciliation happen (it later emerged that she had used it against the advice of public servants who feared she would mangle the Gaelic pronunciation, and so seem insulting to the Irish).

Queen Elizabeth barely put a foot wrong (her apparent coldness after the death of Princess Diana was a rare example).

King Charles, in contrast, has already shown a petulant side with his irritation at leaky pens.

The feral British tabloids will be watching his every move and gesture.

King Charles has recognised that he will need to change. In a BBC program in 2018, he was asked whether, as king, his public campaigning would continue. He replied: "No, it won't. I'm not that stupid."

And no doubt he isn't - but he does come with blemishes.

"Our research suggests that Charles isn't anywhere near as popular as his mother," Sandy Biar, chief executive of the Australian Republic Movement, said.

"There needs to be some work done over the next couple of years so before going into that national vote there is a consensus about what change should happen."

There will be a referendum on a Voice for Indigenous Australians, enshrined as part of the constitution.

The two referendums are tied in together, according to Victoria Grieve Williams, an historian of Aboriginal people and colonialism. Both right a constitutional wrong. The current constitution was designed to protect white interests, she thinks: "The most pressing and urgent need of our time is how to incorporate those people at the margins, including Aboriginal people into the nation state as fully-fledged citizens with the same human rights."

And there is a more political link, according to Michelle Grattan of the University of Canberra. A defeat in the first referendum would be "a massive stumbling block" for the second. "It's hard to imagine the government would be willing to risk a second referendum rebuff. On the other hand, a win for the Voice would create momentum for a republic referendum, ending the perception that constitutional change has become almost impossible."

Politics and debate have been suspended for the two weeks since the Queen's death. There has been respect and genuine mourning - though not the great outpouring of emotion in Australia that there was in Britain.

The atmosphere now changes. Debate begins on the two referendums. Both are complex and turn on detail.

Much can change. All bets are off.