‘Desperate’ Carrie Bickmore admits she wasn’t sure she’d see WA family again

Carrie Bickmore made a heartbreaking admission about her family after a story on Australia’s Covid response on The Project.

The Project host Carrie Bickmore has opened up about her heartache being separated from family in Western Australia throughout the Covid pandemic, admitting that at times she’s been unsure if she’d ever see them again.

West Australian Premier Mark McGowan has kept the state’s borders closed tight for most of the pandemic – but with cases skyrocketing in the Eastern states and WA’s border rules finally set to be relaxed on February 5, Bickmore admitted she had mixed feelings.

Carrie Bickmore: “I just assumed Feb 5 would never happen.”

“Carrie, you’ve got family in WA you haven’t seen for two years now – are you counting down to Feb 5?” co-host Lisa Wilkinson asked after a story about WA’s border closures on Tuesday night’s episode.

“To be honest, I just assumed Feb 5 would never happen,” Bickmore said. “I was just waiting for (McGowan) to continue to change the date – I assumed I would never see them ever again.”

“But if it does stay at Feb 5 … it’s an interesting conversation. Things have changed along the way, throughout the pandemic, about whether it’s appropriate to open up or not. Now, I can imagine a lot of them sitting there looking at what’s happening on the east coast going, ‘WHY would we want any of that?’”

“So as desperate as I am to get to WA, I can imagine the trepidation – particularly for people that work within the health system.”

Bickmore, 41, was born in Adelaide but moved to Perth at a young age, where most of her family still resides. She moved to Melbourne in her early 20s to pursue a career in the media.

WA Premier Mark McGowan will open the state’s border on Feb 5. Picture: Matt Jelonek/Getty Images

Sharing a series of candid snaps from her family summer holiday this week, Bickmore said she was grateful to have enjoyed some downtime with partner Chris and her three children – but sad the holiday couldn’t include a trip back to WA to see the rest of her family.

“Still missing many of the people I love badly … due to the WA border closure but know how lucky we were to even have some downtime as a fam,” she wrote.

Bickmore has been open about her personal stake in Western Australia reopening its borders throughout the pandemic. Back in September, she told viewers she had already resigned herself to not seeing her family for another Christmas.

Bickmore on holiday with her partner and children.

“The border is not going to be open to WA or Queensland for Christmas, as much as I want it to be,” she said on the show. “I have family I want to see and even though [Prime Minister Scott Morrison] is saying they are putting pressure on them, they don’t care.

“I can’t see how they will open.”

Queensland’s borders did open up just before Christmas, while WA’s remained closed – an outcome Bickmore’s co-host Waleed Aly correctly predicted at the time.

“WA, yes, it’s almost a different country at this point,” he told her.

Originally published as ‘Desperate’ Carrie Bickmore admits she wasn’t sure she’d see WA family again