A bit of a long rant, but explains the perils of taking holidays in the age of Covid.
In our world of the Covid normal, eighteen months on, it’s not unfair to expect people to want to go on holidays. That is what my wife and I and our usual travel companions, my wife’s brother and his wife, did recently. We are all from Canberra and aged from mid fifties to early seventies and have all had our first covid shot of AstraZeneca.
We took advantage of the federal government's discounted airfare program in order to support tourism within Australia. However there were no guarantees if flights were cancelled. As a result we chose to travel to ‘safe’ destinations, rather than the east coast states QLD, NSW and VIC all of which have had outbreaks or hotspots in the last six months, including the ACT. We chose to travel to Adelaide and Alice Springs, seems safe enough right? A few wineries, explore Adelaide and the surrounding areas for five days. Then on to Alice Springs to see Uluru, the Olga’s and the West Macdonald ranges. The Beanie festival was also on over the weekend before we left. We volunteered at the festival which is always a great way to get involved in an event. We ended up spending a week in Alice.
Before we left Canberra on our trip we researched as best we could about Covid requirements for entering the areas mentioned. The South Australia Covid web site information appeared to be three or four months out of date mentioning ‘from March...’
In any case we followed the instructions and filled in the Cross Border Travel Registration form. As it turned out, these forms were irreverent on arrival and a QR code registration process had taken its place. All passengers were required to show evidence they had completed the registration. Well no big deal, the process to get out of the airport in Adelaide took about half an hour.
The process to obtain information to enter the Northern Territory was easy to find and up to date on the website. We filled in the NT border entry form and a copy was emailed to us to produce on arrival. The process to cross the border in Alice Springs however was chaotic and unnecessarily time consuming, considering we had already provided all the information online. After producing our border entry form on our phone, we were asked all the questions that were on the form, and it appeared that they were manually entering this information on their computers. This process needed to be completed for every passenger on the plane and it took about two hours to get through after a two hour flight.
During our time away we closely followed news online and on TV following the developments of the Sydney outbreak and then the QLD FIFO worker from Northern Territory. We were due to fly out of Alice on Monday 28 June after the Beanie festival and spend a couple of days in Adelaide before returning to Canberra. We heard on Saturday that some areas in Darwin and the mine area were being locked down, which was concerning but Alice Springs was not mentioned as a hotspot. On Sunday night we discovered that South Australia had closed its border to a number of states including the Northern Territory, the wheels had fallen off.
After a sleepless night we contacted Virgin Airlines on Monday morning at about 8am Alice Springs time. We explained that as South Australia had closed its border to us we needed to arrange an alternative to get home to Canberra. A helpful call centre member told us as our flight to Adelaide was still currently departing at 2:55 that afternoon, we would need to pay for onward flights. After transiting in Adelaide a flight onwards to Melbourne was arranged and then transiting again onto Canberra arriving after 10pm that night. We agreed and paid the additional fares, forfeiting our Adelaide Canberra flight with Qantas on Wednesday. An expensive but unavoidable change to our plans.
On arrival at Alice Springs Airport to check for our flight to Adelaide and collect our onward boarding passes, we were informed that our flight from Adelaide to Melbourne had been cancelled. The check in agent explained that it was due to Covid and as a result no compensation or accommodation would be provided and the next available flight was in two days time. Needless to say we were not impressed by the decision by Virgin to blame any inability for them to meet their 80% capacity rate (or whatever is for a flight to be profitable). I argue the point that as the flight was from Adelaide TO Melbourne, the flight was not cancelled because of Covid, but because of profitability and Virgin is using the ‘Covid’ excuse to get away with not compensating passengers.
In any case we requested to be forwarded elsewhere. Virgin eventually advised that they could fly us from Adelaide to Brisbane instead but no onward flight to Canberra would be available until the following day. We would not be charged any additional money but would have to get some accommodation in Brisbane which was preferable to two nights in Alice Springs. We again reluctantly agreed to this unavoidable change to our plans. Well then onwards to Adelaide, I had checked the SA website overnight as I had plenty of spare time and found the website unchanged and in any case we were not entering SA but only transiting and we had the QR app still installed on our phones.
On arrival in Adelaide, as we were on a flight from the NT the Police, Health and SES were waiting for us and herded us to a cordoned off area to process us. We explained we were transiting, they explained we still needed to be processed, had we filled in a border pass? We explained that we didn’t think we needed to as we were transiting. This seemed to put the health staff into a quandary (hadn't thought of this scenario?). Half the plane was transiting to somewhere else as a result of the border closure. After checking in with the QR app, the health officials then proceeded to fill in our details on paper forms (for the Police) then entered everything into their computers, including where we had been, for how long, where we were going, flight details and more. Needless to say this process took an age. Then we were handed over to the Police who took us to a makeshift quarantine area to wait for our onward flight. This next part seems bizarre, we were then headed back through the front of the airport through the security area, with all the other non quarantine passengers and then on to the gate to board the flight. Interesting to watch this ‘make it up as you go along’ approach to decision making, what could possibly go wrong!
The next unbelievable situation occurred on our arrival at Brisbane airport. We filled out our Queensland Travel Declaration forms and prepared for our next brush with bureaucracy. As we made our way from the aircraft I sighed deeply, wondering how long this would take or if we would have to overnight in a transit lounge or worse. To our astonishment not a single official was on hand to check if we even had a valid Travel Declaration. It's not surprising then to see how people may exploit this lack of security. I’m sure that there was at least one FIFO worker from Darwin who travelled from Alice and ended up in Brisbane.
The rest of the journey was fairly uneventful. We stayed at the Brisbane Airport Ibis Hotel overnight at a cost of a biot under $200 per room, beggars can’t be choosers. The flight back to Canberra went ahead thankfully, but would have happily spent a few days in Brisbane if I had to. Again no one to check arrivals into Canberra, but not really surprising. The ACT website only advises to fill in a travel declaration if you have visited a hot spot.
All in all our trip was not disrupted too much, we only lost a few days back in Adelaide. The monetary loss was not insignificant though. The losers here are the local businesses, our cancelled hotel, the restaurants and possibly a day trip to the Clare valley. There was no need to close SA to the entire NT. Apart from that, this is a real problem now for both SA and NT as people are unlikely now to trust even the formally safe states or be willing to pay for airfares when airlines are taking advantage of the Covid crisis.
At the time of writing I have just learnt that Alice Springs has just been locked down for 72 hours, a very lucky escape for us.
Ric Noble 30 June 2021
Posts
