Prince Alfred wowed the ladies when he visited Australia in 1867, Prince Charles was called a "Pommie bastard" while at school in Victoria and the arrival of Princess Diana on the scene changed the entire complexion of royal tours.
Tours by the monarchy are explored in a new book, The Royals in Australia, by Juliet Rieden, deputy editor of The Australian Women's Weekly and its royal correspondent.
Rieden said royal tours "started because of the monarchy wanting to hang on to the empire".
Queen Victoria had sent her children as emissaries "to check everything was on track", starting with the visit of her fourth child and second son Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, in 1867.
From a WA  viewpoint, the tour was notable because the prince missed the State completely and sailed on to land in Australia at Glenelg in South Australia.
Big crowds followed him and in Melbourne "an immense stand was erected at the corner of the Town Hall, which was filled from top to bottom with ladies".
But the tour ended in shame for his hosts when he was shot in Sydney by gunman Henry James O'Farrell.
 The young prince survived the assassination attempt and eventually visited WA in 1869. The book charts subsequent visits, including the Queen's marathon trip in 1954 when she became the first reigning monarch to tour Australia.
Rieden also explores the impact which six months at Geelong Grammar school in 1966 had on Prince Charles, which his history master said had been the "happiest time of his school days".
Rieden wrote that Prince Charles' down-to-earth Australian schoolmates "didn't feel the need to give the royal visitor special treatment" and for the first time he almost "felt like everyone else".
She wrote that he fondly recalled when he "had to go in and turn the lights out in the dormitories and that was the only time I was called a Pommie bastard".
Prince Charles returned to Britain "a very different person", with an affection for Australia and "with more confidence for his role ahead", she wrote.
His marriage to Princess Diana "changed everything" and on their 1985 tour she was the star.
It forced the royal press secretary to plead for someone to "go and photograph the Prince of Wales".
The royals had since gone from strength to strength through younger members of the family.
A republic in Australia was a long way off, Rieden said.