Border walls coming down: What you need to know
Queensland’s border barricades will officially come down at 1am on Monday, 42 days after it was controversially closed for the second time during the pandemic.
QLD News
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Border barricades will begin coming down tonight as Queensland prepares to reopen to NSW.
But police say plans are in place to close the border within 24 hours in the event of another Sydney Northern Beaches-style COVID-19 outbreak.
The border will reopen at 1am tomorrow, 42 days after it was controversially closed for the second time during the pandemic.
The decision to reopen, announced last week by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on national television, caught authorities including police by surprise but has been welcomed by battered tourism operators.
Gold Coast police Chief Superintendent Mark Wheeler said the two-day job to dismantle the Glitter Strip’s five border checkpoints would start at 7pm tonight with the removal of a giant marquee installed on the M1 to protect police and other officials from harsh road glare.
The M1 northbound will be closed from 7pm on Monday to remove concrete barriers, with others to be removed from the Gold Coast Highway.
Checkpoints on Griffith St at Coolangatta, Miles St at Kirra and the Numinbah-Murwillumbah Rd will also be dismantled.
“By 5am on Tuesday, everything should be back to normal and you won’t even know we’ve been there,” Supt Wheeler said.
“But we’ve given a commitment (to the State Government) that if we need to re-establish border controls, we can do that within 24 hours.”
Supt Wheeler said more than 1000 vehicles containing about 2000 people, suspected of having travelled from declared COVID-19 hotspot Sydney, had been turned back at the border checkpoints since they were established on December 21.
Police had issued more than $4003 fines to more than 60 people for lying on border declaration passes or illegally entering Queensland.
They included a group of five Sydneysiders who were hauled out of a Surfers Paradise resort in late December and escorted into hotel quarantine after using false passes to come into Queensland.
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