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Early in 1966, the Prince jumped to Australia and Timbertop, a Gordonstoun-like branch of Melbourne's posh Geelong school. Charles arrived in February, and for the next six months took 50-to-60 mile hikes in the outback, cooked johnnycakes over his own campfire, fed the pigs and chickens, and chopped wood by the cord. His schoolmates were friendly, though he recalls being chaffed as a "Pom" (Aussie slang for an Englishman) on at least one occasion. "I had an umbrella with me," he said. "It had been raining quite heavily, and they all looked rather quizzically at this strange English thing, and as I walked out there were marvelous shouts of 'Oh, Pommy bastard!' "
Discreet Dates
Back at Gordonstoun in November, he had a long-awaited chance to play a comic acting role: he starred as the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance. Otherwise the year passed quietly. Without sitting for college entrance examinations, Charles was allowed to enter Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1967.
From the earliest days, Charles did his best to blend into the Trinity scenery. He shuffled about in baggy cord trousers and an old jacket, cooked his own breakfasts and bicycled to classes. He decided to try for a B.A. Much of his time was spent over his books, and in examinations at the end of his freshman year he wound up with the equivalent of an A minus average.
His love life, if any, has been discreetly concealed. At a Trinity ball last year, Charles unbent sufficiently, as one observer put it, "to seem intent on kissing an attractive blonde named Cindy, even in the fast dances." The pursued lass was Cynthia Buxton, a fellow student and daughter of one of Prince Philip's birdwatching companions. Charles also was seen occasionally with Sibylla Dorman, a tall, pretty history student whose father is Governor-General of Malta. "We get on very well," says Sibylla, but she refuses to be labeled a "girl friend." Generally, Charles dates friends of Princess Anne or daughters of his mother's friends, and it may well be that his wife will be chosen from this tiny circle. There are no European princesses about who seem to be the right age, and he is—in theory at least—free to marry just about anyone as long as she is an undivorced member of the Church of England.
Charles in Wales
Charles is impressively conscientious about what he regards as his royal duties, whether they give him pleasure or not. Heirs apparent of the past rarely set foot in Wales, let alone bothered to learn more than enough Welsh to struggle through an investiture. The latest Prince already has considerable acquaintance with his titular fiefdom. He has spent the past two months in Wales. It was the Prince's own idea to attempt to quiet the Welsh protests against his investiture and at the same time satisfy his own well-honed sense of duty. Taking along only his cello, a record player and a metal cabinet for some of his papers, he moved into Pantycelyn Hall, a dormitory for the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth. The Prince's arrival, in his indigo MG, transformed the sleepy seacoast town (pop. 10,460). Tourists poured in, and so did police and the press, to mingle obtrusively with Aberystwyth's miniskirted or denim-clad locals.