Steve Aitkin was only five years old when the plane carrying Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and Princess Anne landed at Armidale's airport. But he remembers it vividly.

"The amount of people there was huge," he recalled.

As he stood with his mother and sister (he said his father, a stock and station agent, would have been working), near where Sumaurez Road is now, he saw the monarch's arrival in the Northern Tablelands.

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Also in the crowd was Greg Dawson, who now works in advertising at The Armidale Express.

"The crowd was 10 deep, it was amazing," he recalled.

"The Queen was a lot younger then and so was Philip. He managed to walk down the gangplank quite sprightly. He charged down the stairs behind Liz, and Anne was there."

Looking back on the time half a century ago, Greg said society was very different then.

"It was an era of good manners," is how Greg described it.

"I was standing behind a chain wire fence. That fence was only about three and a half foot high, and that was security for the Queen's visit.

"Police were out on the tarmac, but no one tried to jump the fence, everyone waved their flags, and she waved back. Like I said, it was an era of good manners.

"From memory there might have been 10 cops on the runway, and that was it, and it would have been a crowd of a thousand to 1500 people there. And everyone was very, very respectful."

Steve, who sold his taxi business in Armidale and moved to Port Macquarie about 20 years ago, remembered the event after seeing the photographs The Armidale Express posted on Facebook this week. He said it was the photo from the airport which really jogged his memory.

"There were a good 1500 people waiting to see the motorcade go through," he said.

"She went down the highway (into Armidale). They went around town and stopped off at the teachers' college on the way through, and I believe they visited UNE as well."

They did.

Heading to the university, the Royals took the street now known as Queen Elizabeth Drive.

Banks of spectator seats had been erected beside the road so that veterans of both World Wars, as well as school children and the elderly could watch the vehicles with the waving Royals go past.

At the university the Queen, Philip and Anne visited Robb College where students from all over the campus packed every vantage point to see the regal visitors.

The Queen took a souvenir from the uni. A hand, fitted with a white chamois leather glove, was offered to her by a group of students at the entrance to the college.

Later it was back to the airport, where there were more more lining the route, and the Queen, Prince Philip and Princess Anne departed the city to continue their tour of the country.