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The story behind Queen Elizabeth's 'secret letter' locked in vault and can't be read till 2085!

The handwritten note sits inside a glass case in a restricted area and nobody knows what the letter says, including the Queen’s personal staff

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: Queen Elizabeth wrote a handwritten 'secret' letter that was completed in November 1986, after the Queen Victoria Building in the Sydney CBD was restored, and it’s addressed to the people of Sydney. The secret note is locked inside a vault in the historic Sydney building and cannot be opened for another 63 years. According to Daily Mail, it sits inside a glass case in a restricted area and nobody knows what the letter says, including the Queen’s personal staff. 

One thing is known however and that is the highly top-secret piece of note cannot be unveiled until 2085. The letter is addressed to the 'Right and Honourable Lord Mayor of Sydney, Australia'. The instruction reads, "On a suitable day to be selected by you in the year 2085 A.D, would you please open this envelope and convey to the citizens of Sydney my message to them." It is then simply signed, “Elizabeth R.”

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The Queen Victoria Building, or QVB as it is popularly known, was opened in 1898 and named in honor of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee the year before. Queen Victoria was the great-great-grandmother of Queen Elizabeth. Elizabeth, who became Queen in 1952, visited Australia 16 times, the first time just two years after she was crowned. She was only 27 and the first reigning monarch to visit Australia. It was estimated that about one million people turned out to see her in Sydney.

The building was nearly demolished for civic space and car parking in 1959, and multiple council reviews have been conducted for remodelling over the building's lifetime. A Malaysian company who still hold a 99-year lease then restored the building in 1984, basing their remodelling on images they could find of the QVB at the time of its opening.  

The Queen returned to Australia in 1963 with her husband Prince Philip and visited the country regularly throughout the upcoming decades. Her last visit to Australia was in 2011, when she met with then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

MEAWW previously reported the death of the longest reigning monarch at the age of 96 on September 8. The Queen reportedly suffered from ill health and mobility issues for some time now and died at her Balmoral residence just a few days after meeting UK's new Prime Minister Liz Truss on September 6. Buckingham Palace had tweeted a statement earlier on September 8 that revealed that the Queen had been "under medical supervision" at Balmoral after royal doctors expressed concerns about her health. After the Queen died "peacefully" on September 8 in the afternoon, the Palace released another statement via a tweet that stated, "The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon. The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow."