The unfolding Covid-19 crisis in Victoria has caused plenty of unexpected headaches for grey nomads … and seen some examples of extremely poor timing.
Trevor and Margaret Powell area case in point. They arrived on the shores of the Murray River in Victoria back in February to enjoy a spot of fishing and to spend time with their daughter, who lived just across the river in Tocumwal, New South Wales.
Then the pandemic struck and the travel restrictions meant they were forced to stay put.
In those first few months, the Powells were at least able to travel into New South Wales. Then, as the situation in Victoria worsened and the border closed, they suddenly faced a number of extra challenges.
“Because of where we are on the border, we had been driving only a few kilometres across to Town Beach to dispose of waste and fill up our water,” Trevor told the Shepparton News. “Now, because we can’t get across the border we are having to go to Cobram showgrounds, which is fortunate we can, but there’s a big different between a few kilometres and about 20 kilometres just to fill up with water.”
The couple are aware that others are in a much worse situation than they are, but say it it is still unfortunate that they have been unable to get a permit to cross into Tocumwal to see their daughter.
“Although we’ve lived on the river since February, our postal address is for Koonamoo so we’ve been declined a permit with the recent border zone allocations,” Trevor told the newspaper. “It’s been very challenging for us since we want to be able to get across the bridge to help our daughter who has asthma.”
If Covid-19 restrictions hadn’t thrown the world into chaos, the Powells would be up in Queensland by now but – with harsher restrictions in place in Victoria for at least the next six weeks – they’re going nowhere for quite some time.
“It’s a really nice spot here but because of the system and distribution of information we are unable to stay up-to date to know when we can travel again, there’s so much uncertainty,” Trevor told the Shepparton News. “Hopefully we can travel again soon … but we don’t know when.”
Do we know what the rules are yet if we are already away from home,can we stay where we are or have to return home to country Vic.
I don’t understand how they got stuck. I live on the border and we all had plenty of warning and time to get out of Victoria.