Grey nomads are being urged not to visit Australia’s stunning north-west this dry season … as the extent of the coronavirus health crisis becomes ever more clear.
Tourism body, Australia’s North West Tourism, has said there are many factors in play, but the health and safety of Australians has to come first.
“We love our annual influx of grey nomads and what they bring to our region each year,” said a spokesperson. “Unfortunately, this year it doesn’t seem that it will be able to happen, both to protect their own health and that of the wider community.”
The organisation says the directive from all levels of government in Australia is to limit all non-essential travel. The WA Government has already introduced border restrictions requiring anyone entering the State to go into 14-day isolation … but more measures could follow.
“While intrastate travel isn’t restricted yet, the WA Government has also flagged restricting travel into regions such as the Kimberley in the near future,” the spokesperson said. “This is for a range of reasons including the vulnerability of our significant Aboriginal population and the limited capacity of the health system in regional and remote areas.”
Australia’s North West Tourism says those considering travelling need to consider the long distances they will need to cover and the limited resourcing of the health system in regional and remote Australia should they become unwell.
“Entry and exit from Aboriginal communities has been banned for all except essential services, and this is expected to have ramifications for travelling areas such as the Gibb River Road and the Dampier Peninsula/Cape Leveque,” said the spokesperson. “The Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Service has requested that no tourists visit the region at this time.”
Services such as public libraries and recreation centres are now mostly closed and a large number of hospitality businesses and tour operators in the north west have also shut down.
It’s likely that restrictions will only continue to become more strict.
“We would certainly encourage those not able to travel this year to continue dreaming and planning, and we look forward to welcoming them once it’s safe to do so,” said the spokesperson. “If they already have bookings in place we’d encourage them to postpone rather than cancel as a way of supporting the operators and helping to ensure they’ll be up and running when they do get here.”
Yes we were set to head to the north west of WA and looking forward to catching up we friends working in Broome . This is the second year our travel plans have been derailed . We are currently stuck in Qld at our daughters place so it’s off to glenlyon dam for the winter fishing until we can leave and re evaluate our travel plans before returning to Tasmania.