Enroute to quarantine
One hour to go, before we arrive in Melbourne, our point of entry into Oz and place of enforced quarantine. Jeremy has done the necessary cancellation of our onward flights and we’ve duly added to our accumulating Qantas credits.
We understand why the enforced quarantine is necessary. A pity those arriving from international destinations before us were not a bit more assiduous about self isolation. But maybe it was always going to get to this anyhow.
I’m reading between the lines here about how ‘we’ are being portrayed. I know the ships finally accepted into Montevideo hit the news but I am not sure of the tenor of the news. Did we bring it on ourselves? Is our government benevolent in its rescuing of us? What is the narrative? For our part it felt like we received no consular assistance and we are paying our own way home, at considerable cost on a commercial flight. Without our kids back home acting vigorously on our behalf we would have struggled. We only hold one piece of the puzzle, but our only contact with the Australian consulate was a generic letter sent to the ships captain requesting that he ‘please pass this smart traveller advice on to any Australians on your ship’. We would have felt much more reassured had they known our names by then or that there were in fact two of us
I am unsure if repatriation flights will be organised, nor if there are more stranded Aussies in South America. However a more concerted effort on the part of embassies and consulates might have filled up some more seats on our two thirds empty plane. As I understand it our flight, plus the delayed Qantas flight to Sydney that has hopefully now left Santiago are the last commercial flight options.
When I think back over our trip it is interesting to see how business as usual operates, Until all of a sudden it doesn’t. When we left there were no travel warnings, no COVID issues in South America. Life was normal in Argentina. Once we reached Ushuaia, we and many others like us packed out the shops and restaurants before embarkation. At no point did we consider not embarking on our trip. None of our friends or family ever suggested that we consider cancelling. Oceanwide placed strict restrictions on the flight route passengers took to join the ship (avoiding all known trouble spots at that time). Less than a week into the trip when the shit hit the fan we became trapped as successive windows of opportunity closed. It all happened so fast. The closing of all Argentinian domestic travel to limit travel over an upcoming a long weekend was the most decisive in blocking our exit to Buenos Aires and flights onwards. And so the saga evolved.
We’re about to take a deep dive into the new world reality. Our access to news has been so limited while I’m sure for many of you it has been all consuming. Stranded travellers tell a particular type of story,
We have landed. The waiting has begun. After about 15 mins standing in the aisles, with all the usual crowding into the aisles that occurs waiting to get off a plane after a long or even a short flight, the Captain informs us that disembarking will take place in about 20-40 minutes. Another plane has arrived before us ( from Doha apparently) and sensibly they want to clear those passengers through the system before we disembark. So we sit back down again.
We are a mixed bag of passengers but united in being Australian citizens or permanent residents. I guess that is unusual, except perhaps on a flight back from Bali! There are quite a number of families with babies and young children, young couples who were obviously doing the mid 20’s Aussie tradition of extended travel, and a couple of solo travellers who look like they’ve been travelling rough.
Eventually there is an announcement made by someone from Border Force regarding the mandatory quarantine and disembarkation process. This time, ‘take two’ we adhere to strict social distancing as we exit the aircraft. Here we go.