Huge numbers of grey nomads and other travellers were reported to have rushed out of South Australia just before the state went into strict lockdown at midnight,
People described ‘crazy’ and ‘incredible’ scenes of banked-up traffic between Adelaide and Broken Hill last night as drivers raced to get into New South Wales.
The ABC reports that one Broken Hill caravan park was still checking people in at 2am, while others camped in rest areas leading into the city.
Michael McIvor told the ABC that the occupancy of his caravan park doubled in a matter of hours as a huge influx of cars and caravans arrived in NSW.
“It was flat out,” he said. “We got them all checked in then made sure we cleaned all the toilet blocks and had enough toilet paper for everyone and then crawled into bed.”
Mr McIvor said some travellers wanting to visit South Australia had to double back after hearing the announcement, prompting them to retrace their steps back into Broken Hill.
“We’ve got plenty of people who were here last week that were going to be in Adelaide and South Australia for about a month and now they’re back in Broken Hill,” he said.
Kerry Hucks, from Yunta Truckstop in South Australia, 150 kilometres from the NSW border, said it was “a bit frantic” as travellers flooded the venue to stock up on food, coffee and fuel.
She told the ABC that the truck stop made almost triple the profits of a normal day, and some travellers reported waiting an hour to refuel.
“It was just a sea of cars coming up the road,” Ms Hucks said. “We had people going from Broken Hill to Adelaide and some had to turn around … we got a double-whammy with that.”
I think it’s time to open the borders and leave open and deal with this as one country.
Didn’t work to well in the USA !
Glad our WA border is well controlled.
All sounds a bit different from when we made the run from South Australia to Queensland back in February, before that border closed. Rest areas were closing around us, Broken Hill was like a ghost town.
The Benny Hill tune springs to mind as I read this article about people out and about supporting the local shops and attractions of their own state…