IT’S A ROUGH RIDE FOR LONG-DISTANCE LOVE
SARAH Sleeman is heartbroken that border restrictions make it impossible to visit her fiance in Melbourne … they’ve already been apart for four months.
“Eric and I have been apart for 117 days and counting, and I was booked to fly down on July 10,” she said. “I booked my flights months ago. My heart just hurts.
“We have done a long-distance relationship to get the children from previous relationships through the last year of high school and now we are separated by states.
“I understand the process behind this, my heart just hurts.”
Ms Sleeman became engaged to Eric Zuniga, who works for Boeing, in January this year and since then they’ve spent just five weeks together.
They met on a cruise two years ago and it was love at first sight.
“We've made our relationship work for two years by making sure our respective children weren’t unfairly affected,” she said.
The out-of-work events planner and daughter Ruby Burgess, 9, live at Highland Park, and are renovating the house she and Mr Zuniga will one day share. But long distance isn’t easy. “It’s so hard on everybody. He can’t see his elderly parents and we’re both committed to doing the right thing and won’t break the rules. The thought of making a mercy dash interstate to meet in a hotel doesn’t sit well with us so we’ll just have to wait it out.”
Ms Sleeman said flights from Tullamarine to Ballina were already booked out and she wouldn’t risk getting fined driving to see him in NSW because she’d have to declare she’d been in contact with a Melburnian.
“The hardest part is, we don’t know when we will be able to see each other again. Sometimes you just need a hug.”
Another person affected is Shea Isabel, who won’t get the chance to say goodbye to her terminally ill grandad in Geelong. She applied for an exemption to avoid self-quarantining once home and was told she was “exempt from quarantine on compassionate grounds, but (that) depends on the day who your officer is as they make the decision and can refuse you …”
“So now I unfortunately will not be able to say my final goodbyes or even attend the funeral. It’s so upsetting.”
Griffith University student Nikki Richardson drove to Melbourne to get work and now she’s stuck there.
“I’m staying with family but I wanted to pick up work and I’m torn because I would have to leave now to make it back by Friday midday.”