Why Princess Diana will never be allowed to rest in peace

OPINION -- I was a child growing up in regional NSW the day Princess Diana came to town, and I can still recall it vividly.

Red, white and blue bunting was erected in the main street, children were given the afternoon off school, businesses and shops closed and thousands of people, myself included, lined the streets ahead of a 90-minute visit and planned royal walkabout.

Yes, her husband, Charles, then the Prince of Wales, was there too, but no one cared. We were all there to see one person: Diana.

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We wanted to meet her, to touch her, or simply to glimpse her. Basically, we all wanted a piece of her, and 28 years after her death, it seems nothing has changed.

By the time the royal couple arrived in our town on that hot March day in 1983, we had been waiting hours among a crowd that was rows deep.

Then the moment finally happened.

We were lucky to be standing on her side of the road. I remember catching a tiny glimpse of her pink dress, matching hat, delicate pale skin and blonde hair as she greeted those closest to the front, and lifting my camera over my head to try to capture a snap.

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Later, when my roll of film was developed, I was pleasantly surprised to have caught her, albeit crooked and slightly out of focus, but she was there.

A real-life princess in the town where I lived. Not on the cover of one of the magazines I would pore over again and again.

While the couple's royal tour of Australia was hailed a triumph, it was controversial at the time – firstly because Diana refused to come to Australia without her nine-month-old baby, Prince William, and secondly, because cracks were already starting to show in their marriage.

It was her first overseas tour since marrying Charles two years earlier and was recreated in episodes of The Crown, which detailed Charles' seething jealousy over his wife's growing popularity.

As Diana's star grew, and outshone her husband's, the public and media's thirst for her swelled as well, and soon became overwhelming.

By the time the tour ended, Diana was a superstar.

When her marriage to Charles ended in 1996 – almost four years after their separation was announced – and she lost her HRH styling, the media became free of any perceived constraints on reporting her every move.

She was followed everywhere; to the gym, on holidays and during her last ill-fated trip to Paris.

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By the time she died, after being pursued by a gaggle of paparazzi in a car that crashed into a pylon of the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris on August 31, 1997, she was the most famous and photographed woman in the world.

While the outpouring of grief caught many by surprise, not least the royal family, many of us expected it would eventually wane.

But 28 years on, Diana remains at the forefront of the world's mind; her name still commanding headlines.

The media and the public still share an insatiable appetite for Diana and it is fed by a seemingly never-ending supply of books, documentaries and films.

There have been at least three dozen books written about her, including the latest, Dianaworld: An Obsession, which was published this month.

In his book, author Edward White explored the mania that was created by Diana's mere existence.

When asked by 9honey earlier this month what Diana would make of the continued obsession with her life all these years later, he said he had asked her friends the same question while researching his book.

Their view: That she would be just as perplexed today as she was in the interest in her when she was alive.

"I think that she would continue to be baffled by it," he said.

Among those ensuring Diana's name stays in the headlines is her son Prince Harry, and his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

They are reportedly planning a new documentary about her life to coincide with the 30th anniversary of her death in 2027, as part of their latest Netflix deal.

It will bring the total number of documentaries about Diana to at least 18, while there have also been a number of dramatisations of her life, with the princess played by everyone from Naomi Watts to Kristen Stewart and Elizabeth Debicki.

Then there is Harry's memoir, Spare, in which he revealed he used to think she had faked her own death and later drove through the Pont de l'Alma tunnel to recreate her final moments.

But when is enough enough?

For a woman who lived 17 of her 36 years in the public eye, but has now been dead 28 years, whose own brother Earl Spencer said in his eulogy she was "the most hunted person of the modern age", surely it is finally time to let her rest in peace.

My own obsession with Princess Diana, born in a country town during my childhood, is still there bubbling under the surface. But even I admit, the time has come to let it go.

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