Across the country, coronavirus measures are being wound back.
Take Queensland, which on Friday announced it would reopen its border to New South Wales by next month, so long as there are 28 days of no community transmission, and which last week relaxed measures to allow entry to people from the ACT.
Or Tasmania, which is due to reopen its borders to most states and territories at the end of the month.
But there are still plenty of border restrictions in place across the country.
Western Australia has been clear it is in no rush to end its hard border, and that's just one example.
And while the Prime Minister has called for COVID-19 restrictions to be eased in time for people to see their families at Christmas, these Australians with loved ones interstate aren't holding out hope.
Teagan is relocating to WA so her family can be reunited
Way back in March, Teagan Sloman's husband Jay flew to Western Australia for his job.
As a fly in, fly out worker, he expected to return home to his wife and two young daughters in a matter of days.
Except coronavirus restrictions and the need to keep his job meant he never made it home, and Teagan's spent the months since going to work, caring for their two daughters and enduring Melbourne's stage four lockdown in Eynesbury alone.
While they're grateful they're both still working, Teagan says the extended separation has pushed them to move across the country to join Jay.
"We're all moving to WA after Christmas. It's been hard … I'm tired. I'm really tired. And we've been through some milestones as well, especially with my two-year-old," she says.
"She started climbing out of her cot, she's given up the dummy, she's been toilet training, and I've had to do it all myself. And it's pretty relentless and exhausting.
"On Sunday, my two-year-old split her head open. She's fine, but it was really scary and I had to take her to the hospital to get her head glued back together and I could only relay this to [my husband] on the phone."
Still, moving across the country was far from Teagan's first choice.
"We've built our home, we knew which school our daughters would go to, and we had all these long-term plans," she says.
"And I've worked in the same place for 10 years. My work is like my second home, my work friends are like family to me, and it just seemed like too much to uproot and move somewhere that we've never been, buy a house that I've never seen, enrol my kids in school and daycare that I haven't visited.
"But the longer it went on, I got pretty desperate for something to look forward to. This year's been so hard and we need a fresh start where we'll all be together.
"It can't be any worse than this year."
Teagan says she gets why the border restrictions between various states are in place.
Even though the young family's made their decision and booked removalists for just after Christmas, they haven't booked any flights.
"Who knows what will happen," Teagan laughs.
Cris moved to Victoria just before the second lockdown in 'not great timing'
Cris and his family only moved from New South Wales to Warrnambool in Victoria four months ago.
The aim was partly to be closer to Cris's parents; the 45-year-old had watched his father struggle with being separated from his brother in Western Australia after he was diagnosed with a serious illness in the early days of the pandemic.
"We thought that would give him some family around and that would be great," Cris explains.
But two months later, regional Victoria was placed under stage three restrictions, with just four reasons to leave home.
"Yeah, our timing wasn't great," Cris says.
Before coronavirus, Cris, his wife Tracey and daughters Holly and Zoe regularly travelled back to Perth, where the majority of their extended family is based.
They have, of course, been grounded this year.
The first half of 2020 was spent watching as the birthdays and celebrations they'd planned on spending in Western Australia came and went. A trip to Canada to visit Cris's brother was also cancelled.
"Who knows when I'll be able to see him next," he laments.
Regional Victoria has already begun to emerge from the latest round of coronavirus restrictions.
But as new case numbers continue to fall and movement restrictions ease in Victoria once more, Cris says he and his family are almost resigned to seeing out the year without a single visit to Perth.
"I understand the reasoning behind the border closures to a certain extent," he starts, in words that echo the sentiments of everyone interviewed for this article.
"But we are a nation. We're not seven different countries.
"I think it's really disappointing that we went through the first wave with this belief that we were all in this together, and now it's every state for themselves."
Cris says the border restrictions meant his father was unable to see his brother before he died last month.
"It was too difficult for him to jump through all the hoops and the hurdles … we may have been able to force the issue but my father is a man of the land, and being holed up in hotel quarantine for 14 days, I don't know what that would have done for his mental health.
"And at the time it was unknown how long my uncle had to live — he may have passed away while my father was in a hotel.
"That would have been absolutely horrific, being locked in a hotel room, without any family around."
Briony has no idea when baby Georgia will meet her grandparents
Briony Marshman says she's separated from "basically everyone" right now and has been since Western Australia's borders closed due to coronavirus on April 5.
Her father, her husband's parents, the couple's siblings and their nephew live in South Australia and have never met the 31-year-old's first child, Georgia, born in Perth nine days after borders closed.
This wasn't how she expected the first year of her daughter's life to go.
It also wasn't how she expected to become a mum for the first time, having fallen pregnant well before the first COVID-19 cases were detected in December last year and nearing the end of her third trimester as the first restrictions were being put into place after the pandemic was declared in March.
"That was an extremely frightening time. No-one knew what was going to happen, we didn't know what the health system was going to look like when I was giving birth, if my husband was going to be allowed in the hospital … or what would happen if I was to become unwell," she says.
"I was really spiralling with all the possibilities."
Briony's mum sensed her anxiety.
When it became clear the border was going to close, she booked a last-minute flight to join her daughter in Perth, where she stayed with Briony and her husband for just under a month until after Georgia was born.
Since then, the young family has been alone.
"The border closure [was] the only thing I'd been afraid of at the time that actually ended up being reality and then really persisting," Briony says.
It's taking a huge emotional toll.
"Becoming a parent is a daunting experience," she says.
"You really want [family] around you to help you through it and give you support — but also just so they have those memories of her at these stages.
Briony had planned on travelling to South Australia with Georgia every month or so this year, and her family there had planned on taking frequent trips to Western Australia to visit, in since-scrapped plans.
"It's just really hard to see the rationale [for border closures] when you're talking about WA and SA … two states that are basically COVID-free," Briony says.
"I feel like I'd almost deal with it better if my family were in Victoria, because then I could conceptualise that there was a reason for it.
"That, and the fact that there's sort of a lack of any light at the end of the tunnel.
"Ever since the start, I've been scared to focus on [Christmas] and to convince myself that it might happen."
Rebecca was alone for the first anniversary of her mum's death
Rebecca lives in Melbourne. Her step-dad Mick lives about a four-hour drive away, just over the NSW-Victoria border, in Walla Walla.
They haven't seen each other since January.
Their proximity has made the separation all the more excruciating to endure as a series of firsts have passed in the wake of the suicide of Rebecca's mother last year.
There was Rebecca's 27th birthday on March 25, just after the first coronavirus restrictions were announced.
"It was one of those milestones where, my mum wasn't around, and even though we weren't talking properly [before her death], it's still one of those things that gets weird," Rebecca says.
Then there was Mother's Day on May 9, followed by the first anniversary of her mum's suicide on July 13.
"My step-dad was going to come down, but that was like the exact week the restrictions came [back] in," Rebecca says.
"I feel like I've cried a lot … I live on my own and I myself have mental health issues … I have a cat, but she can only provide so much," she laughs, and then her laughter gives way to tears.
Since then, the first anniversary of the death of Rebecca's grandfather has also come and gone, as has her mum's birthday.
When her mum died last year, she says she only took two days off work.
"I never really got to process it all properly. So this year was supposed to be the year of processing death. But then, coronavirus," Rebecca says.
"Especially her death anniversary, it was really hard not spending it with my step-dad because he also experienced trauma. He acts real tough, but he experienced trauma in having to watch her and give her CPR.
"So I hated that I also couldn't be there for him on that day."
Rebecca's due to undergo surgery on her back towards the end of November.
"And that's another thing that I would maybe have liked him to be able to come down for … but I don't think the borders are going to open up."
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMibmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTEwLTA0L2Nvcm9uYXZpcnVzLWF1c3RyYWxpYS1zdGF0ZS1ib3JkZXJzLWZhbWlsaWVzLWZyaWVuZHMtc2VwYXJhdGVkLzEyNzE1MDI20gEnaHR0cHM6Ly9hbXAuYWJjLm5ldC5hdS9hcnRpY2xlLzEyNzE1MDI2?oc=5
2020-10-04 03:46:00Z
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