English breakfast: Mark Salmon is a staunch monarchist. Credit:James Brickwood "There are no new monarchists being born," declared Nicola Roxon, the then federal attorney-general, in 2006. But tonight, amid cheese platters and champagne flutes, the monarchy is alive and flourishing for a group of people who were too young to vote in the republic referendum in 1999 - yet remember weeping on the day two years earlier when Princess Diana died. A Fairfax-Nielsen poll, published on the day William and Kate and bonny Prince George (dubbed "the republican slayer" on breakfast television) landed in Sydney in mid-April, found only 28 per cent of respondents aged 18 to 24 backed the idea of an Australian head of state. Sixty per cent said no to a republic - more than any other age group (the next closest were the over 55s). Rather than renouncing the monarchy, young Australians are embracing it - in greater numbers than their parents or grandparents. There are 41 young monarchists here tonight, praising the stability of the constitutional monarchy, damning the inconstancy of politicians and gushing about the time they came within cooee of royalty ("We went to Taronga Zoo and they finally walked past after they had been to the giraffes. I was like 'wow'; he is so tall and so real"; "Their Royal Highnesses entered the hall to a blare of trumpets. My heart leapt as the guests of honour walked past me").

On Her Majesty's service: Gabrielle Hendry. Credit:James Brickwood They stand in small groups and practise what they learnt during the Monarchist League's one-day media training course. How to shake hands: stare at your partner and advance on them, hand outstretched, with a firm grip and smile. How to sit: when being interviewed on television, sit on your coat to keep it in place. How to talk: keep your answers to reporters short, sweet and simple. It's a war, you see, one that young monarchists are winning by sheer force of personality. I have never met a more orderly and organised group of 20-somethings. Their neat hair could withstand a hurricane. Mother dearest: Rachel Bailes. Credit:James Brickwood Among them is social-science student Gabrielle Hendry, 19. Dressed in a high-waisted A-line black dress and heels, with rose-pink cheeks and her hair corralled in a ponytail, she describes those gathered by a small painted statue of Prince William "as the next generation on the frontline of defence for our nation's constitutional monarchy".

She became a monarchist about a month ago. "Before then it didn't fuss me, I didn't think it was a topical issue," she tells me. "The monarchy just seems like the more sensible choice. I didn't see the need for a republic. The system works, in my opinion." Loving the system: Jai Martinkovits. Credit:James Brickwood I ask Hendry if she would like to be a princess one day. She tells me she wants to be a military consultant - she likes protecting people. "Look, I love corgis, but I am not someone who collects teaspoons or has a portrait of the Queen dangling over her bed. I am just an average person who sees the value in having these people around." She compares the monarchy to the parent of a muddled teenager. "A parent will let the teenager do what they want, they will assert their authority when necessary, and we can always rely on that parent if we ever need to, which is a lovely thing, really." It's a bust: Daniel Czech is clearly a fan of Queen Elizabeth II. Credit:James Braund

But aren't teenagers meant to rebel? "I got all my rebelling done a year ago," says Hendry. League members recently launched a monarchists' club at Sydney University. A similar group is soon to start at the University of NSW. Several guests at tonight's function sign up to the cause, among them economics student Lachlan Auer, 20. He sits at the bar and says he is preparing for another republic referendum in 2034, or thereabouts. "You have to be on the ground to fight against that when it happens," he says. Royal gala: Thomas Jaspers gets into the regal spirit of things. Credit:James Braund 2014 But the republican question seems settled here. Tinkling over the room are soft concertos by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, provided by Alex Wansbrough, a lone young republican, who is here to help a monarchist friend with the music. When the room rises to toast the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, he starts to squirm over his red wine. "It's sort of like a wake for the republican movement," he says, quietly.

Liz love: Thomas Jaspers with his collection of royal memorabilia at his Melbourne home. Credit:James Braund 2014 It's April, and in the unseasonably bright autumn sun, a pride of young monarchists give 1000 mini-Australian flags to those awaiting the arrival of the Duke and Duchess at the Sydney Opera House. "God save the Queen," calls out Rachel Bailes, 21, wearing a low-cut singlet and faded blue jeans. She has ginger hair and pale freckled skin and walks over to the nearby paramedic tent for some sunscreen. She tells me she has been interviewed on FM radio this morning, in her role as a spokeswoman for the Australian Monarchist League. "They asked me if I wanted to marry Prince Harry - how insulting," she says. Anyway, she prefers Prince William. "I like his demeanour, his attitude. He has almost got this simplicity about him." She is excited about seeing him in person, along with the hundreds of people lining the harbour. "When it's your future king, it's like welcoming a member of the family." Monarchists are not made but born that way, she reckons, from the moment they hear children's tales of kings and queens and tremulous princesses. For a year 7 school project, Bailes pretended to be Princess Diana and answered questions from her audience in character: What is Charles' title? (A: Prince of Wales); Who are your sons? (A: William and Harry); How many lovers have you had? (A: Seven, apparently).

"I used to imagine that one day a king and queen would visit our house and say that I was actually their child," she says. "It would have meant that I had this destiny, this greater purpose, this specialness. I was a middle child and that was what I wanted to know." She joined the monarchist league at 14, to the bemusement of her republican parents Marion and Matthew. "At first we thought it was a phase, but it seems to have been going on for quite a while now," Marion tells me later. Bailes sees things in generational terms. Baby boomers and Gen X-ers wanted to buck the system. Their young offspring aspire to something altogether more orderly, stable and secure. They are surprisingly conservative, Bailes says. Not so much revolutionaries as counter-revolutionaries, rebelling by not rebelling at all. "We are not the generation of the '70s who wanted to tear everything down and build something new," Bailes says. "I think we are more appreciative of precedent than our parents were. "Whereas the previous generation was much more ideological, much more willing to say an Australian should aspire to be the head of state, young people are more pragmatic. Our generation has seen a lot of cynical politics over the last 10 years, we have seen a lot of chopping and changing ... "Young people appreciate things that are stable, they're appreciative of continuity.

We don't see the republic as an ideal. Our generation is less abstract than that. It's not inspiring to young people to want to get rid of something." If not the republic, then, what are the big dreams and ideals of her generation? Bailes thinks for a while. Then, finally, inspiration. "Young people want to see things like fiscal responsibility. That's what I hear them talk about." "Fiscal responsibility!" I say. "Couldn't they just get tattoos?" Opinion polls plot the demise of the republican dream in young people. In December 1999, a month after the failed republican referendum, 59 per cent of respondents aged 18 to 24 said Australia should become a republic, against 57 per cent for the population as a whole. Support for a republic among younger Australians then plunged from a cliff: down to 50 per cent in 2004, then 42 per cent in 2010 and 28 per cent in April this year. That same month, polling showed the lowest pro-republican sentiment in 35 years, with only 42 per cent support among all age groups. "I suspect the main reason is just that the republic is not being talked about," says pollster John Stirton. "You would generally expect this age group to have less conservative attitudes to issues, so it signals to me that young people haven't really engaged with it.

"They are not sure really what it is all about, so they are inclined to say no." Stirton cites the surge in support for the republic in the early 1990s, when then prime minister Paul Keating put the issue on the national agenda. Meanwhile, all was not well with the Windsors: Charles and Diana were separating "amicably"; Fergie was photographed in the throes of a tryst with a toe-sucking Texan. These are different times. The royals have their house in order. In Australia, the republican issue barely rates as a footnote. "I'm not saying it has got nothing to do with William and Kate and the better publicity the royals have been getting over the last years," says Stirton, "but I suspect it has got more to do with the fact that the debate isn't happening." Back at the Opera House, the young monarchists have exhausted their supply of flags. We walk past a small group of Aboriginal protesters ("Hey royals, give back what you stole!") towards the city apartment of Philip Benwell, MBE, national chairman of the Australian Monarchist League. He ushers us into his thick-carpeted home on the 33rd floor, past a signed portrait of Prince Philip and bookshelves with biographies of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Robert Menzies and Louis Mountbatten. Benwell, 65, asks about the crowd at the Opera House. "One republican turned up and some Aboriginals," says young monarchist Sam Corby, 18. "Odd man out, odd man out," says Benwell, chipper as a lark. But he is disappointed at not being among the invitees to the royal reception. "Gays environmental groups, greenies, but no monarchists," he smiles sadly.

The price of constitutional monarchy is eternal vigilance, he adds. "We can never relax because you never know when the republic might come up again." And so another 700 flags are gathered from his dining room table and marched down to the Opera House, to be snapped up in quick succession. And then, finally, they come, strolling past the crowd, waving and walking and smiling, all at once. Kate is dressed in a wattle-yellow Roksanda Ilincic dress. William is wearing shoes. Prince George is somewhere else with the nanny. People cheer and clap one-handed, holding aloft mobile phones. The royals climb the stairs towards the sun. They stop. They wave. And they are gone. Not all monarchists are born equal, says Jai Martinkovits, 27, the executive director of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy (ACM). We are sitting in the ACM's small shared office, in Parramatta's Westfield Tower, drinking water from red plastic cups. An Australian flag hangs limp in the corner by some cardboard boxes, from which Martinkovits hands me a copy of his co-authored book Give Us Back Our Country: How to Make the Politicians Truly Accountable ... on Every Day, of Every Month and of Every Year. He has buzz-cut hair and wears a dark grey suit and navy tie. There are two types of monarchists in Australia, he says, each with their cohort of young members. "There are the diamonds and pearls monarchists, which I think our friends at the Monarchist League largely cater for. Our people tend to be driven by the system itself."

Martinkovits calls himself a constitutional monarchist, not a monarchist per se. "My attraction to constitutional monarchy is not about what dress Kate is wearing. It's about the fact that we've got a damn good system of government." Membership numbers for monarchist groups are murky. The Australian Monarchist League says it has about 17,000 members, the vast majority of whom sign up for free online. About 70 per cent of those members, I am told, are aged under 40. ACM prefers to cite Facebook likes, which have topped 47,000 - 19 per cent of whom, I am told, are under 25. Both groups claim their stocks of younger members are growing fast. "Since 1999, across opinion polls, there has always been a bell-shape curve, so you have got the middle-aged baby boomers interested in the republic and the very elderly not interested at all," Martinkovits says. "But the one thing that seems to be ignored is that youth support tends to be very low for a republic. Perhaps it's apathy, that could play into it." Martinkovits says he became a monarchist by accident about a decade ago, while attending ACM functions with his girlfriend, who worked there as a receptionist. They are now married and have a house in nearby Greystanes. Martinkovits works as a mortgage broker. I wonder how he got his life together at such a young age. "I have no doubts," he says. "I am rock solid in what I believe." Most young monarchists I meet seem acutely organised. They have pale skin and perfect enunciation. They study or work in law or finance or property. They don't trust politicians, but have dreams of being Liberal Party MPs.

I ask Martinkovits whether young monarchists are being cloned in a factory. He counters by telling me his father was Hungarian and his mother Welsh. He likes taekwondo. Sure, he has a life plan, but it's written in pencil. "I can think of monarchists who would tick every non-conservative box," he says. My search for a different breed of young monarchist takes me to Melbourne, where geneticist Daniel Czech, 28, sits in his bedroom in the city's south-east suburbs. An Australian flag hangs on the wall, between two framed landscapes of river gums. "I just love the Australian bush and Australian culture," he says. He has thick hair and dark shadows under his eyes. "We are a lucky country and I think a big part of that luck has come from being a strong democracy and I think the Crown is vital to that," he says. "It's about the safeguards that the monarchy puts in place against political corruption and the abuse of political power." I ask him whether he has any doubts about Australia's constitutional monarchy. "I do," he says. "The whole hereditary system is something I think about a lot. I like people who do a good job and are rewarded for their efforts."

In Melbourne, I also meet Thomas Jaspers, 27, a comedian and drag queen with a collection of kitsch royal memorabilia and a dark tattoo of the Queen inked on the inside of his left forearm. "It took about three hours and it killed," he says. "I had always wanted a portrait tattoo. The Queen was the only person I thought of who I will like forever." He rejects the suggestion that young people are conservative. "My generation is just better at picking and choosing what things need to be modernised and what traditions need to be upheld." Jaspers grew up in a nursing home run by his parents. He recalls how a resident liked to stop at the portrait of the Queen in the common room and say "God bless you, Ma'am" - he started doing the same at the age of five. There's something unashamedly sentimental in his love for the monarchy. "When you look at the cold hard facts, there is absolutely no reason why they should be here," he says. "But they are nice and they make people happy." "Revolution isn't a word I like to use, except when it is glorious," says Mark Salmon, 32, as we barrel down the freeway from Sydney. He is a high-school maths teacher with a keen interest in history. Change comes not all at once but in waves, he says. The tides run in and out, bringing stability, then revolution, then stability again. Salmon wears a striped blue business shirt and black pants worn high on his round frame. In a glass cabinet in his living room in the NSW central coast city of Gosford, next to a giant cat-scratching castle, is his collection of royal plates, cups and saucers and shortbread tins. On his bedroom walls are two portraits of the Queen, one next to a cartoon picture of Voltron: Defender of the Universe.

In his cupboard hangs the Australian flag vest - Union Jack in the front, stars in the back - that he was wearing the day he met Prince Charles. "Ooo, I like your vest," said Prince Charles, as they shook hands on Bondi Beach in 2012. "It may have only been for a very short time while he shook my hand, but it was still a connection," Salmon says. "I felt special." He has met four royals in all: Charles and Camilla, William and Kate. Salmon describes himself as left of centre. Gay marriage? "Why not?" Stem-cell research? "That can save so many lives." Climate change? "Yes, I do believe in climate change." Abortion? "I believe in the rights of women. I believe women should be educated. I believe they should be paid the same as a man for the same job. I believe in equality." Yet, he happily supports a centuries-old hereditary system steeped in entitlement. Try as he might, Salmon will never be king. He will never know royalty beyond a fleeting handshake. He says he likes the political stability of constitutional monarchy. He was raised to see the British royals as family, like distant cousins who live far away. He met the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in Canberra on their recent royal tour. He remembers Kate's green dress and how shiny her hair was. "There was a little voice in the back of my head saying, 'Isn't she beautiful, isn't she beautiful.' "

Prince William was passing by when he noticed Salmon was wearing the blue-and-red striped tie of the British Household Cavalry, and asked him when he served. "I am sorry, Your Royal Highness," replied Salmon, "it was a souvenir that I bought last time I was in England." The next day, as the TV news showed pictures of the royal couple returning home across the sea, Salmon saw Prince William was wearing his own Household Cavalry tie. "It makes me feel I have a connection with my future king," says Salmon. "And that he may remember me in the smallest way every time he wears that tie - and he wears it quite often."