‘I’m only going over for cuddles’
There are stories of hope and love as life reignites with the return of quarantine-free travel to and from Australia. Georgia-May Gilbertson and Joel Maxwell report.
It’s such a small thing, to hold someone close. But impossible across the cold Tasman Sea.
From tomorrow, a host of travellers, some who missed loved ones, missed funerals, or ached to return home while living with cancer, can fly between Australia and Aotearoa without quarantine.
Those travellers have spoken as Fortress New Zealand, secluded from the global pandemic, takes a first step back into the world.
Just being able to reach out and physically touch her daughter, after more than a year of separation, will mean everything to Wellingtonian Andrea Varcoe.
With the launch of a two-way safe travel zone, Varcoe is heading to Melbourne this month to see her adult daughter, Luana Tafeamaalii.
‘‘I’m only going over for cuddles, that’s all. I don’t care about anything else, I just want to give her a cuddle.’’
Varcoe’s tickets were booked, $750 return, as soon as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made the announcement of the two-way travel safe zone.
This has been the longest Varcoe has gone without seeing her daughter. It will be a brief trip of a few days. ‘‘Just a catch-up, really. Just to be in each other’s presence, and just be with each other.’’
She was not worried about travelling, and if a lockdown happens while Varcoe is in Melbourne then ‘‘we’ll deal with it’’, she said.
‘‘We take that risk, and we’re fully aware of it, and we’ll manage that. We’re not going over blind, or uneducated or naive about it.’’
Since October, Australia has allowed quarantine-free one-way travel from New Zealand but people returning had to complete 14 days of managed isolation.
Earlier this month Ardern announced the two-way bubble – warning those going to Australia faced some risk that they would not easily be able to return home.
Professor Nick Wilson from the University of Otago said a yetto-be published modelling exercise showed the risk to New Zealand of travellers coming from Australia was ‘‘extremely low’’. ‘‘That risk will [only] decline with improved vaccination coverage.’’
If anything, the new two-way travel zone was riskier to Australia, he said. He was concerned that New Zealand, with ‘‘14 border failures since July’’, was going to wreck the bubble by its slackness in dealing with redzone countries (where Covid-19 is out of control).
Australia would tolerate small border failures, ‘‘but if they get out of control . . . that’s going to . . . threaten the whole travel thing,’’ Wilson said. ‘‘My impression is the Australian systems are still working better, and that’s because they were so shocked by the large Victoria outbreak.’’
Wilson said Australia was allowing five-times fewer arrivals per capita to return than New Zealand.
‘‘There’s a lot of people complaining about it; 40,000 Australians who want to come home and are in a queue . . . but we let people in to watch the America’s Cup, and we let in entertainers.’’
Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown and Ardern said last month that their governments were working towards a two-way
It was pretty awful living under curfew . . . It was quite isolating, and it really made me miss my family in New Zealand. Kate Shuttleworth, New Zealander living in Melbourne
quarantine-free travel bubble by May, with no definite date set so far.
Wilson said he would like to see New Zealand expand green zones to the Pacific Islands, and places like Taiwan, which had successful elimination strategies.
Just coming home to the first dual green zone couldn’t come soon enough for Perth resident, Selina Steele, who was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer in July last year and had surgery and radiotherapy with little to no support.
‘‘It was a bloody tough time. So getting back to New Zealand can’t come soon enough. Both my parents are getting older – 80 and 75 – but thankfully healthy. Plus all my siblings and nieces and nephews all live in New Zealand, too. I only have my two teenage sons in Perth and no other wha¯ nau.’’
Steele said she was over the moon when Ardern announced the travel bubble: it finally gave her the belief that she’d see her parents again.
‘‘Over the previous 14 months that hope was seriously gone, and I was so jaded about Covid, too.’’
She has lived in Australia since 1994, but moved to Perth in 2004. During lockdown, the biggest challenges were trying to buy basic food supplies because of panic buying.
‘‘I spent a lot on UberEats. We weren’t allowed to see friends or family nor leave Perth metro for 12 weeks. Those coupled with watching New Zealand in lockdown, and friends getting sick with Covid-19 in Melbourne, definitely took a toll on my mental health.’’
Steele – who is originally from O¯ taki, north of Wellington – worked as a social worker in child protection and youth homelessness and had to work during lockdown. She worked a minimum of 50 hours a week while her son’s schooling was online for eight weeks.
She will fly back to New Zealand from Perth on May 7.
Kate Shuttleworth has lived in Melbourne since the end of 2018 and was ‘‘ecstatic’’ when she heard the news of two-way travel crackle through the radio while on her way home from an Easter break in Adelaide.
The 39-year-old hasn’t seen her family since the end of 2019 and will be flying to New Zealand on May 21.
Shuttleworth missed her grandfather’s funeral in January, and while it was hard she said there were ‘‘so many others’’ in the same position as her.
Living in lockdown in Melbourne was ‘‘incredibly’’ difficult.
‘‘It was pretty awful living under curfew, we couldn’t go out after 8pm at one point, and we could only go out and exercise for an hour a day. It was quite isolating, and it really made me miss my family in New Zealand.’’
Shuttleworth will spend two weeks in New Zealand – she booked her tickets home a week after the announcement.
‘‘My work has been incredible, and they’re allowing me to keep working from New Zealand while I’m home.’’
Counting down the days in Wellington, Varcoe is preparing for her trip on April 30, which will include re-celebrating the 50th birthday she missed marking with her daughter.
She said it would be ‘‘awesome’’ just to get out of the country again. She had been a regular traveller to Australia – at least twice a year – and Pacific Islands before Covid-19 arrived.
Facetime wasn’t cutting it any more for Varcoe, after more than a year of separation from Tafeamaalii. And now, with the bubble in place, this was only the beginning of their reconnection.
‘‘For both of us, if anything happens either way, we can jump on a plane now and go, which is massively awesome.’’
Ardern, announcing the bubble, said just as we have alert level settings for managing cases in New Zealand, we would now have a framework for managing New Zealanders in the event of an outbreak in Australia. This involves three possible scenarios: ‘‘continue, pause, suspend,’’ Ardern said.
A ‘‘traffic light’’ system would be established for the bubble with more restrictions in the case of an outbreak in an Australian state.
The norm would be a green light, with the presumption being that Covid-19 is not present in the community.
Airports would have a ‘‘green zone’’ – away from any flights from elsewhere, and the flights will be crewed by staff who have not flown on any high-risk routes. Masks will be required to be worn on flights.