Australia's Brisbane gives royal couple warm welcome

The Queen and Prince Philip have received a warm welcome from a sea of 45,000 well- wishers at Brisbane's South Bank in Australia's Queensland during their visit to the city on Monday, local media reported. The royal couple spent about 20 minutes greeting the huge crowd, accepting everything from single blooms to large bouquets - and in one case a boomerang, the Australian Associated Press (AAP) reported. They then headed into the Queensland Performing Arts Center for a private meeting with flood and cyclone victims and emergency personnel who responded to Queensland's natural disasters in January. The royal couple spent most of their time on the river with Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, who pointed out sites the surging river devastated during January's floods. Earlier on Monday, crowds gathered to greet the royal couple's flight from Canberra, with hundreds of people gathered at Brisbane airport to wave Australian flags and cheer their arrival. As the royal couple attended the opening of a storm water project at South Bank, Bligh said the Queen's visit meant much to a battered and bruised state. "Your visit here is a reminder that the care and concern of the royal family and the nations of the Commonwealth are still very much with us," Bligh said. The Premier gives a very warm welcome to the royal couple on behalf of all the people of Queensland for their visit to Brisbane. In a short speech, the Queen said she'd been terribly saddened to watch the normally peaceful Brisbane River rising up with such devastating consequences in January. "The loss and destruction was harrowing to see only to be followed by a cyclone which caused further damage to the north coast of Queensland," the Queen said. "Ten months later, we are here to pay tribute to the resilience and courage of Queenslanders who bravely picked up their lives and rebuilt them after a period of great adversity." She said she and Prince Philip had been "greeted with great warmth and good humor, in the great Australian spirit". "I have seen the fortitude, ingenuity and determination of the people of Brisbane to overcome the setbacks of last January," she said, before formally opening the water-harvesting project.