Grey nomads across Victoria have had the brakes put on their travels, with Premier Daniel Andrews announcing all regions in the state will go into lockdown.
The news comes in response to a growing number of cases emerging in Shepparton. Today, Victoria as a whole recorded a total of 61 new cases of Covid.
Shepparton Mayor, Kim O’Keeffe, told the ABC that a lockdown would prevent infections from spreading across regional Victoria.
“Look, with these numbers increasing I welcome a lockdown. I think that’s the best way to address this,” she said. “As much as we all hate it, let’s do that lockdown, let’s do what we need to do and do it fast.”
With all of New South Wales already in lockdown … and that lockdown likely to last many weeks, if not months … life has become very challenging for those who had been travelling in Australia’s two most populous states.
Ironically, in most of the rest of Australia, life is going on as close to normal as you can expect to get in the middle of a global pandemic.
Grey nomads in the north and the west are continuing to enjoy their adventures with the biggest problem for many being able to get a spot in the packed caravan parks and campgrounds.
However, the short sharp lockdown in Darwin and Katherine recently are a reminder that in a Covid world, nothing can be taken for granted.
We are in northern NSW, no Covid cases, Tweed Shire. Been here for 7 weeks and can’t travel back to Vic as they have all NSW as extreme red zone. How are we supposed to go home anytime in the future?
We all have seen how quickly the situation changes and it’s a gamble that you and others have taken so the only thing to do is sit it out.
We are Queenslanders currently travelling WA in MH. We certainly do feel privileged to continue life as normal with the three western states of WA, NT and SA virtually Covid free. Our only concern is planning our return to QLD by end of year as situation could change rapidly.