Border ban forces business owner Amanda Blair to move or close-up her shop Courtyard Cafe

One Granite Belt mother has been forced to make the unimaginable decision and either leave her family and potentially not see them in months, or stay in Queensland and have to close her small business. It’s something she says big business never have to deal with.

A Granite Belt businesswoman says border restrictions have forced her to leave behind her family and move interstate just to keep her business afloat.

The Courtyard Cafe owner Amanda Blair made the difficult decision on Tuesday morning to leave her home, daughter and husband in Queensland while she lives out of a motel room just over the border so she can operate her small shop.

“The situation is I live in Queensland, but my business is in NSW like lots of people so the impacts have been that I couldn’t run my business,” she said.

“When these types of snap decisions and overreactions come at the price of people’s livelihoods, careers and sanity, I have to wonder why.”

Mrs Blair said the move was her “only option” for the foreseeable future, and a decision larger businesses never have to worry about.

“It’s not financially viable for me not to be here (in NSW) in the long-term,” she said.

“I need to keep the continuity of the business going, otherwise it would have sat here with food going off and cost incurred.

“The big guys don’t suffer, they don’t have to close their doors. It’s a different situation when decisions governments make have an impact.”

Courtyard Cafe in Tenterfield. Photo: Contributed

The problem Mrs Blair now faces is that she could go months without seeing her family as Covid cases continue to skyrocket in NSW.

“Now that I’ve left, I can’t re-enter Queensland. Re-entering means having to be flown into the state and then quarantine in a hotel, which is not going to happen,” she said.

“For the sake of it being a line in the ground, a line in the ground means nothing, yet it’s a border but that makes all the difference.

“Border bubbles worked fine, I’m happy to comply with that and take precaution, but this is a bit extreme and impacting a lot more people than it was last time.”

Six of Mrs Blair’s nine staff live in Queensland, so this hard border closure has “decimated (her) workforce”.