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When Prince Harry and Meghan walked through the doors of Melbourne’s Royal children’s hospital just after midday on Tuesday, a hush came over the crowd of staff and patients gathered to greet them. It was followed by a soft, collective “hiii” – as though the crowd felt that speaking too loudly might scare the duke and duchess away.

The couple walked in almost without ceremony on this first stop on their four-day Australian tour, greeting hospital management in the foyer before making their way around the arc of people gathered to see them, paying particular attention to children.

Above them, the upper-floor walkway bridges that hang suspended above the foyer were packed with people, craning to see, as the couple shook hands with well-wishers and took time to speak to medical workers and patients, offering hugs and waves to others in the crowd.

The duke and duchess will visit multiple cities during this trip, their first Australian tour in eight years – and their first since stepping back from royal duties.

When asked by a journalist what he was most looking forward to about being down under, Harry replied “everything”. “It’s good to be back,” he said.

The couple visited young people with acute and chronic illnesses and who were undergoing rehabilitation in the hospital’s adolescent medicine ward, before taking part in a group activity in one of the hospital’s gardens.

“It was a genuinely meaningful visit for our staff and for the young people receiving care,” said the hospital’s chief executive, Dr Peter Steer.

The hospital has had royal visits in the past, including from Queen Elizabeth II, who opened it in 1963, and by Charles and Diana in 1985.

Harry and Meghan’s second engagement on Tuesday was expected to take place at a centre delivering homeless services for women, reportedly chosen to reflect the duchess’s commitment to community-led support for vulnerable women.

Other planned appearances were significantly more commercial and controversial, including an exclusive three-day women’s retreat headlined by Meghan and pitched as a “girls’ weekend like no other”. Tickets cost $2,699 including accommodation, or $3,199 for a more VIP experience including a group table photo with the duchess.

Harry will be a keynote speaker at InterEdge’s “psychosocial safety” summit, a two-day professional development event with tickets ranging from $498 for a virtual attendance to $2,378.65 for the platinum experience. He is expected to talk about workplace mental health.

The trip is not an official royal tour, as the couple are no longer working members of the royal family, having renounced their status and moved to the US in 2020.

And it is expected to attract less attention.

“Back in 2018 they were newly married, newly pregnant and we were very, very excited,” a Flinders University associate professor and royals researcher, Giselle Bastin, told Guardian Australia this week.

“They had a glamour attached to them … they felt like a new beginning, like the future of the Windsors. [But] there’s been so much fracture and unhappiness around the couple and their relationship with the royals … the celebrity shine has rather worn off.”

In 2018 the couple were welcomed by rapturous crowds, lavish receptions, flower presentations and a meeting with the then-prime minister, Scott Morrison.

Bastin told Australian Associated Press on Tuesday that this time around it was “well known that the Sussexes are in dire need of income and so a staging of a quasi-royal tour to Australia is being regarded as a rather desperate attempt to monetise their status as royalty.

“During the 2018 tour, Meghan was overheard to say that she couldn’t believe she ‘wasn’t being paid for this’, and the irony is that this time she is coming to Australia and being paid.”

Along with a reported shift in public sentiment towards the duke and duchess, police confirmed that taxpayers would cover additional security costs and public safety operations for the couple, contradicting repeated assurances from their team that the visit would be entirely privately funded.

An online petition calling for Australian taxpayers not to foot the bill has attracted more than 45,000 signatures.