New Zealanders return home after being stranded in Australia on April 19, 2021. – Marty MELVILLE / AFP
The first passengers embarked, this Monday, on the flights of the “bubble” now allowing to travel between Australia and New Zealand without having to carry out quarantine on arrival.
The emotion was strong for the separated families, since the border was closed almost 400 days ago due to the coronavirus epidemic, who were able to find each other for the first time.
New Zealanders stranded since December
“It’s a great day for families and their friends,” said New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, welcoming the effective policy to fight against the coronavirus in both countries, which allowed the opening of this corridor. . Before the pandemic, Australians made up the largest proportion of foreign tourists, 40%, traveling to New Zealand, with around 1.5 million arrivals in 2019. On the first day of the establishment of this corridor, most of the passengers were returning New Zealanders. Tourists should be more numerous during the next school holidays in Australia, scheduled in a few weeks.
This event was the subject of extensive media coverage in both countries on Monday, with many direct televisions from airports. The words “WELCOME WHANAU”, welcome family in the Maori language, were written in giant letters on an embankment near a runway at Wellington Airport. For Lorraine Wratt, a New Zealander stranded by the pandemic while she was with her family in Australia, it is “great” to be able to travel again. “We arrived in Australia on December 11 to spend Christmas with our children… We had planned to return in February, it was a bit of a nightmare”.
Caution
Hundreds of thousands of expatriate New Zealanders live in Australia and, before the coronavirus, many regularly flew back to the archipelago. The journey takes three hours. Australia is also considering the possibility of creating travel “bubbles” with Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, while New Zealand is working to allow unrestricted access to small Pacific states such as than the Cook Islands and Tuvalu.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison also raised the possibility that, by the end of 2021, Australians vaccinated against Covid-19 could travel abroad. On their return, they could thus observe a period of quarantine at home rather than being forced to stay two weeks in isolation in a hotel. “The idea that everything opens one day, that’s not how it’s going to happen,” however tempered Scott Morrison. “It will be done in a prudent way, working very hard on medical and health measures.”