New Zealand and Australia have announced they will relax the border rules for vaccinated travellers from later this month to the relief of many who have been separated from family and friends for years.
Vaccinated citizens and visa holders travelling to New Zealand from Australia will be able to fly there from 27 February and do 10 days of home quarantine, and those who are in other parts of the world can return on 13 March (and then do 10 days of home quarantine). Meanwhile, Australia will open to all fully vaccinated visa holders, including tourists, on 21 February, with no quarantine required.
Four people who have been affected by the countries’ strict border restrictions discuss how it will feel to be reunited with partners, family and friends.
‘My grandmother keeps telling me she’s going to die before she gets to see me’
The opening of Australia’s borders means that Samantha Law, a 30-year-old Australian national living in Kyrgyzstan, will be able to see her family and friends for the first time in two-and-a-half years. “It’s been pretty difficult. I haven’t lived in Australia for a few years now, but you always know that whenever you need to go back, you can,” she says. “I have an elderly grandmother who’s getting frailer and keeps telling me that she’s definitely going to die before she gets to see me again, which is not very nice to hear.”
Law, who works in global health international development and has lived in Kyrgyzstan for two years, says she’ll be “trying not to think too much” about all that she’s missed when she returns to New South Wales in March. “It’s going to be a tearful few weeks in March. A number of really good friends have gotten married … [and] also had children. One friend has even had two children,” she says, adding that her younger brother is also now in a “very serious” relationship with a woman she hasn’t met.
After seeing her family, the first thing Law plans to do when she’s back in Australia is swim in the ocean. “Kyrgyzstan is the country furthest from the ocean of any country in the world, and … I grew up on the coast of NSW. So once I see my brother and my parents, then it’ll be a swim in the ocean for sure.”
‘It’s been a real challenge’
Francesca Scott, a 30-year-old NHS healthcare assistant in North Tyneside, met her fiancee online at the beginning of the pandemic. As the world locked down in 2020, Scott and New Zealand national Tony Smith, a 37-year-old logistic manager working in Auckland, began video calling every day but weren’t able to meet until months later.
Smith went over to England in December 2020 and stayed until March 2021, during which time the couple got engaged. “It was just after he left that I found out I was pregnant,” the 30-year-old says. “It was obviously very difficult because we’d spent all that time in each other’s pockets and then he was gone. At that point we weren’t sure when he was going to be able to come back because the borders are still closed and obviously it costs a lot of money.”
The easing of New Zealand’s border rules means Smith’s family will finally be able to meet their daughter-in-law and grandchildren – Scott gave birth to twins last November. Smith has applied for a UK visa and the couple plan to get married in May. “It’s [been] a real test of a relationship, but I feel like we’re almost there. It’s not for the faint-hearted. It’ll be really special the day that he lands back in England and we can be together again.”
‘It’s such a relief’
“I didn’t know at the time that I would be unable to return for more than a year,” says Australian author Alicia Wanstall-Burke, who lives in north-west England and is travelling back to Queensland, Australia in March for a month.
Thirty-five-year-old Wanstall-Burke arrived in the UK in January 2021 when she came over to marry her fiance, now husband, Graham. She was hoping to return to see her nine-year-old son during his school holidays in September, and again this January, but due to Covid restrictions she was unable to meet the conditions to travel and couldn’t afford to quarantine.
“It’s breaking my heart not seeing him,” she says. “We would normally say how many days it would be till we next see each other but we couldn’t do that because he’d get sad when I wouldn’t come home.”
She decided to book her flights before Queensland officially announced the changes. She says it was a “huge risk but it’s such a relief”.
“The trauma and anxiety of the pandemic still lingers though,” she adds. “I watch the news waiting for the border to slam shut, or for some sort of insurmountable restrictions to be put in place, reducing flights or complicating pre-travel preparations. I’m over planning everything and I’ve got my rapid antigen test already packed.”
‘The feeling of being cut off from family is hard to describe’
Jon Albrecht in Cornwall hasn’t seen his parents, brother and sister in Nelson, New Zealand since February 2019. “The feeling of being cut off from family is hard to describe,” says the 47-year-old.
Albrecht, who works as a rigger, first came to the UK from New Zealand in 1979 as a child with his family. Since then most of them have moved back to New Zealand. “It’s been exhausting,” he says. “I’m really conscious that I’m not the only one in this situation but I think for many people, the whole pandemic has been very difficult.”
He hopes to return to New Zealand at some point this year but doesn’t know yet when. “It means I can visit my brother and my elderly parents who are no longer in the best of health. And I want to embrace my sister who I miss greatly.
“It’s hard to put it into words but it feels like the end of something. I guess it just feels like going home.”
