SAMPUL HARI PERTAMA - OFFICIAL FDC 40 TH ANNIVERSARY OF ACCESSION OF HM QUEEN ELIZABETH II

SAMPUL HARI PERTAMA 

OFFICIAL FDC 40 TH ANNIVERSARY OF ACCESSION OF HM QUEEN ELIZABETH II

TANGGAL TERBIT 6 PEBRUARI 1992

 

TAMPAK DEPAN 

 

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Ruby Jubilee of Her Majesty the Queen's Accession to the Throne

Technical Details        

        Release Date:                    6 February 1992

        Tablet Values:                   20c, 60c, 90c, $1.00, $1.80
        Artist:                                Derek Miller
        Photographs of HM the
        Queen provided by:           Alpha Photographic Press Agency Ltd
        Printers:                             Leigh-Mardon Pty Ltd (Lower 4 values)
                                                 The House of Questa Ltd ($1.80)
        Process:                            Lithography
        Paper:                               CA Watermark
        Stamp Size:                       28.45 x 42.58 mm
        Perforation Gauge:            14.06 x 14.09 mm (Leigh-Mardon)
                                                14 per 2 cm (House of Questa) 

As citizens of a British Dependent Territory, the people of the Pitcairn Islands acknowledge the British Sovereign as their own.  Apart from Christmas Day and Bounty Day, the only other public holiday is the Queen's Birthday.  It is proper, therefore, that special Royal events should be commemorated on Pitcairn.
 
A bitter wind blew across Heathrow on 31 January 1952 when Princess Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip left London airport for a five month tour of East Africa, Australia and New Zealand.  King George VI, accompanied by the Queen and Princess Margaret, insisted on remaining on the tarmac until the aircraft had vanished into a leaden sky.
Five days later, the young royal couple were in Kenya, staying at Treetops Hotel, a three-bedroomed resthouse built in the branches of a giant fig tree.  Beneath the hotel was a salt-lick and pool which could be floodlit at night to give the appearance of moonlight.  On the evening of 5 February and late into the night they watched and photographed the wild animals beneath a platform in front of the hotel.  Princess Elizabeth retired for an hour or two's sleep, ready to begin photographing again at dawn.
Kenya time was three hours in advance of the British time.  As Elizabeth Longford says in her biography of the Queen, "...it is therefore more likely that it was at a moment when the King and his successor were both asleep that the crown passed".  King George VI died peacefully in his sleep during the very early hours of 6 February 1952.
Unaware that she was now Queen, the former princess left Treetops to fish for trout twenty miles away and it was not until lunchtime that news of the King's death reached her.  By five in the afternoon, the royal party began a journey which ended in London twenty four hours later - just one week after leaving.
Britain was in mourning as the Queen stepped from the aircraft to be greeted by her Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, Opposition Leader Clement Atlee and other dignitaries.
At the Accession Council of Queen Elizabeth II the following day, the young queen in black appeared alone before a gathering of elders in St James's Palace.  She read her Declaration of Sovereignty to the assembled Privy Councillors in a clear steady voice which the Declaration of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was proclaimed by heralds from the ramparts of the Palace and elsewhere in London.
At twenty five years of age, her personal, carefree life was over.