BORDER BUBBLE: WHERE YOU CAN GO
Border under scrutiny
IF you intend crossing into NSW today to visit friends or family remember your border pass. And, oh, don’t go further south than the Tweed Shire, otherwise you’ll have to quarantine for 14 days at your own expense.
Those who live in Tweed can travel as far north as the Ormeau area.
However, those in northern NSW cannot travel to Brisbane for work, unless they are deemed an essential worker.
The new “border bubble” rules coincided with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s hard closure of the border this morning to NSW and the ACT.
It is designed to stop a second wave of coronavirus like that seen in Victoria, which recorded 450 new COVID-19 cases yesterday.
GOLD Coasters can hop over the border for a surf in the Tweed – but venture to Byron Bay and you will be turned back at checkpoints or forced to quarantine under a new border bubble.
The border zones revealed on Friday and in force from 1am on Saturday come after Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced earlier this week the whole of NSW and the ACT would be blocked at the border to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Residents on either side of the Queensland-NSW border living in designated border zone postcodes can move between the Gold Coast and Tweed Shire for any reason including recreational purposes, provided they have the proper border pass.
Gold Coast residents can only travel beyond the Tweed Shire in NSW if a special exemption is granted, or if they are workers considered to be performing an essential service. Tweed residents cannot travel north of the Ormeau area.
Queenslanders trying to return home from a declared hotspot will be turned back and have to find an airport, fly back into Queensland and then enter self-funded quarantine.
Tweed residents will be turned back at the border if it is discovered they have ventured beyond the Tweed Shire in NSW before trying to cross into Queensland.
Gold Coast Police Chief Superintendent Mark Wheeler said: “If you’re a Gold Coast resident, you’ll be able to go down to Kingscliff for a surf but not to Byron Bay.
“If you step out of the Tweed Shire, your ability to come back into Queensland stops. Byron Bay is completely off limits.”
Residents in the bubble now need a Queensland Government X-pass to cross and proper identification. The pass needs to be updated every seven days. Children with parents will not need identification.
Superintendent Wheeler said Tweed residents who work in Brisbane are out of luck, unless they are granted a rare exemption or their work is deemed essential.
“They (the government) recognise the cross-border communities are very unique. But they only go as far north as Ormeau in the Gold Coast City Council area,” Chief Superintendent Wheeler said. He said the zoning created a tourism bubble for the Gold Coast and Tweed.
Superintendent Wheeler said thousands of Queenslanders piled over the border in the past couple of days to avoid being shut out of the state. There were reports of vehicles moving less than a kilometre in two hours on Friday.
Superintendent Wheeler confirmed those who did not return before 1am Saturday would be turned around and forced to return to Queensland by plane.
“Any Queensland residents who return after 1am on Saturday morning, unfortunately, we will have to turn them around at the border checkpoint and they will have to come back into Queensland via air.
“They’ll have to go to an airport somewhere and then fly back into Queensland. They’ll then have to undergo mandatory quarantine for 14 days at their own expense.”
Superintendent Wheeler said exemptions to enter the state would be “few and far between” and included specialist workers in law enforcement, military personnel and government employees.
“Construction workers who live within the bubble, for instance a Tweed Heads builder, may under certain circumstances be able to go outside the Gold Coast City Council area only under very strict conditions,” he said.
The government’s border restrictions website states: “The only people allowed to enter Queensland by road are truck drivers, workers related to the transport of freight and logistics, people performing essential activities and border zone residents.”