“We’re ready to do good”
Shortly after General David Hurley was announced as Governor of NSW, back in 2014, he was invited to an audience with the Queen.
“I was really quite emotional,” he remembers, even now a little misty eyed. “We were with her for about 25 minutes, and when we walked out, I said to Linda, ‘Who would have thought that two little kids, growing up in Warrawong and Hurstville, would come one day to have a private audience with Her Majesty the Queen? How did that happen?”
How indeed? On the eve of his investiture as Australia’s Head of State, General and Mrs Hurley invite The Weekly to join them for a pot of very strong tea and a chat about the love, faith and hard work that have brought them here.
The Governor General designate grew up near Wollongong, south of Sydney. “It was booming in those days,” he says. “The steelworks provided jobs, there was a big multicultural community, young families, lots of activities. My father worked for the Commonwealth Rolling Mills, which made corrugated and colorbond metals. My mother was a shop assistant in a grocery store.
“It was a little bit like marrying a stranger … he swept me off my feet.”
“I had a
