'It was quite a shock': Brooke Boney's confusion after receiving email from Buckingham Palace before meeting Queen Camilla

Former Today Show host Brooke Boney has spoken of her confusion about receiving an email from Buckingham Palace which later led to a meeting with Queen Camilla.

Boney is now living in the UK where she is studying at Oxford University after five years co-hosting the breakfast television show.

She was among a number of guests from across the Commonwealth invited to a reception ahead of King Charles and Queen Camilla's royal visit to Australia and Samoa this month.

Watch the video above.

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Actress Cate Blanchett, singers Neil Finn and Grace Jones, author Kathy Lette and rugby star Theodore McFarland were also invited to the reception held inside St James' Palace in London on Wednesday evening.

It was held in celebration of the Commonwealth ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa.

Boney said she had no idea she was going to be invited.

"It was quite a shock because you get this email out of nowhere that's like, 'Hi... the King and Queen request the pleasure of your company'," she told Today.

"It's all really formal and I was like, 'Are you sure? Do you have the right Brooke Boney?'"

"The whole experience is pretty surreal, especially as an Aboriginal person, how do I engage with this? It's a very complicated history between us and the royals.

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"I'd rather be someone who is in the room having conversations than someone who is not.

"And also, I just wanted to see what it was like inside the palace. It's cool."

Boney said once she got inside there was "lots of movement" before the King and Queen "enter from different sides of the room".

"I was standing right in between both of them and I turned around and this guy wearing a uniform said 'Excuse me ma'am, would you like to meet the Queen?'

"I was like, 'Oh yeah, OK'.

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"A couple of her aides came over to me and they were quite interested in me talking to her about the domestic violence part of their trip because it's a really big issue here in the UK as well."

Part of Queen Camilla's itinerary in Australia will include a meeting with the GIVIT charity working to help victims of domestic violence, a cause the Queen has been involved with since marrying into the royal family in 2005.

Boney added: "She's really interested in social issues and you could really see that by the people who were in the room" such as those working in the environment, a passion of the King's.

Boney said she "wanted to make sure I do the right thing, do I have to curtsey?"

The main rule, she said, was that "you have to make sure they speak to you first".

"There's lots of different protocol... I don't want to embarrass the nation, my ancestors and my descendants all on one go.

"So I curtseyed".

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Boney said they spoke about her studies at Oxford and told Queen Camilla she would "fit in well" in Australia.

Queen Camilla said she "loved Australians".

"She said, 'It's so far away, I wish we could stay longer'."

King Charles and Queen Camilla will arrive in Australia on October 18 spend several days in Sydney and Canberra before departing for Samoa on October 23.

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