Gold Coaster Rebecca Fuggle is stranded in Bali after catching COVID-19 while self isolating ahead of return to Australia
Catching COVID-19 during self isolation has left a Gold Coast women in a hopeless situation in Bali
Gold Coast
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GOLD Coaster Rebecca Fuggle, stranded in Bali after catching COVID-19 while self isolating ahead of her return to Australia, feels she has been left without hope.
She’s been unable to renew her visa and fined $100 a week since February 15 for being an illegal overstayer.
Ms Fuggle, a former high school teacher who is now a regressive therapist, flew to Bali with her partner last year but was placed into lock down soon after they arrived in March.
Despite attempts to get home when requested by the Federal Government, they had three flights cancelled between July and August, without any refunds.
The 34-year-old from Surfers Paradise said they applied for, and were given, “social” visas after local authorities revoked all permanent and indefinite visas they’d given to travellers.
“We kept trying to get home via Garuda airlines, this was assigned as the only airline available to fly back and forth to Australia from Indonesia, but each time was told that no flights were available for months,” she said.
She finally got a flight booked for January 28, five weeks before her passport expired on March 10. The pair socially isolated for three weeks before her flight at a village in Seminyak.
“But unfortunately I fell ill a week before my flight. I got an antigen test done and was tested positive for COVID-19,” she said.
“I don’t know whom or how I got it as we have followed social protocol all along but we could have come into contact with asymptotic people.
“The first week I was in bed all week with severe exhaustion and headaches, fever, sweating, I lost my sense of taste and smell completely.”
She was officially quarantined at home, was given no medical advice, care and was told to take vitamins from the hospital doctor.
Up until February 14 the pair were able to renew their visas monthly but after this were told to reapply for a new social visa and extend those.
“It takes up to two weeks for these to be processed in Jakarta, and they take your passport now which hasn’t always been the case.
“As I missed my January flight I am now in a situation where my passport is going to expire in March and my social visa needs renewing.
The next flight out of Bali was the 25th of March and my passport expires on the 10th of March. I couldn’t renew my passport straight away as I was legally in quarantine.
“Therefore, the consulate issued the emergency passport alternative but they (Indonesian authorities) rejected my visa as my passport was going to expire.
“So far I owe about $1400 to immigration and if I can’t pay it it’s either asking family, friends or the government to step in.
“I’m now officially an Aussie stranded in Bali without a visa and an almost expired passport and a flight booked that I won’t be able to catch if the situation can’t be resolved – if I cannot pay the overstay fees.
“I may be detained and deported regardless.”
She said it felt as if she was being persecuted for catching COVID and contracting it before her last flight led to this domino effect of “me being compromised physically, mentally, emotionally, financially and politically”.
“It only seems that family and personal friends and family know what’s going on and it’s time the Government stepped in to help Australians get home once and for all.”
'We can die for all they care': Coast dad in UK lashes out - Jan 2021
“WE can die for all they care.”
This is the shocking reaction of a Gold Coaster stranded in the UK after learning that authorities have culled the number of international arrivals allowed by half because the UK variant strain of COVID has landed in the Australia.
Ormeau father Peter Morgan has been trying to get home since August without success and now says he’s got “absolutely no chance” of getting it.
“I think the government would have preferred to stop incoming flights from the UK altogether but were advised they couldn’t do it, so did the next best thing,” he said.
“The most annoying thing is that this entire strategy (culling arrivals again) places the care of Australians in Australia as the only issue. The care of Australians outside Australia impacted by these cuts is not addressed at all. We can die for all they care.”
Until February 15, NSW will only be allowed to take a maximum of 1505 people a week into hotel quarantine, Queensland 500 weekly, while Western Australia is capped at 512.
The Northern Territory will increase its intake to 850 international arrivals a fortnight (up from 600), after the Federal Government agreed to pay to increase capacity at the Howard Springs quarantine centre near Darwin.
Individual agreements will be made with the ACT and Tasmania and there’ll be no changes to caps in Victoria or South Australia. Those returning must also return a negative COVID-19 test prior to departure. Exemptions may apply in extenuating circumstances.
Mr Morgan said instead of slashing arrivals, the government should be working with airlines still carrying some of the nearly 40,000 stranded Australian citizens home to triage based on both vulnerability and current wait times.
“To draw an analogy, Australians are competing to get on flights like refugees struggling to get one of the last few food sacks off the back of an emergency truck in a third world country,” he said.
“The Australian government should be doing far more to help its stranded citizens. The nation is permanently diminished in my eyes. All that crap about mateship and a fair go. Just horseshit.”
Mr Morgan said the earliest he’s likely to get home and that’s as long as Australia doesn’t change the rules again, was on “my old faithful revolving Emirates booking which now sits on a confirmed flight on 23rd April”.
“The Australian reporting of the UK ‘mutant strain’ like we’re all living in some sort of Zombie Apocalyptic nightmare doesn’t help get anyone on our side.
“It’s not a great position, but everyone is getting by and the vaccination program is going really well. And the sun is still rising in the morning.”
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STUCK AUSSIE TELLS QLD GOV TO 'GET OUT OF WAY' - December 3, 2020
Pressure is mounting on Queensland to increase its weekly cap of 1300 international travellers after the reopening of borders to NSW and Victoria freed up rooms in quarantine hotels in Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
It’s understood that between October 1 and December 1 this year, Queensland has hosted more than 8000 people from different states or territories in hotel quarantine while its borders were closed.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) recently told a Senate committee there were more than 36,000 Australians who had registered their interest to come home, with 8,070 people classed as “vulnerable”.
According to DFAT, 39,000 people have returned to Australia since September, including 14,000 Australians on its priority list. It expects a further 29,000 to return before Christmas.
Gold Coaster Peter Morgan flew to the UK in February to say goodbye to his dying dad and has been trying to return home since August. He said the situation was dire for Australian citizens overseas, yet it felt as though the entire nation had wiped its hands of them.
“Now all internal borders are reopening there’s no reason for people to be quarantining in other than their home states. Allowing more passengers into Queensland is the obvious thing to do,” he said. “The Northern Territory option should only be for overflow or urgent cases.”
Mr Morgan, of Ormeau, said he couldn’t understand why Queensland, who allows 1300 arrivals a week, couldn’t accept 3000 as NSW does.
The father of three has missed out on his son’s 18th birthday, graduation and formal, and he fears Finn, 18, may have left for university by the time he manages to get back in 2021.
“That’s a scar that might never heal. You always want to be there when they spread their wings and leave home. And of course I missed his last year living with us as a family. That’s never coming back,” he said.
“Earlier this week I was just working away at home with a playlist on and Michael Bublé pops up with ‘Home’. So there I was gazing tearily into the middle distance … it’s really going to hurt not being with my wife Maria and sons after all this time away.”
Mr Morgan said he was keenly aware of the even harder struggles other Aussies were having getting home and that’s why he wasn’t “elbowing my way to the front of the queue with the Darwin flights” despite being offered one.
“These really shouldn’t be first come first served really - urgent cases should be offered flights ahead of me,” he said.
“I would just like the government to get out the way so I can come home to Queensland under my own steam, quarantine responsibly, and test as required.”
Mr Morgan said it was “nuts” that a person who tested positive in Australia could quarantine at home, when overseas arrivals, 99.4 per cent of whom tested negative to COVID, had to hotel quarantine.
Asked whether it would allow more overseas arrivals into the state or open up quarantine hotels in Cairns or Gladstone, a Queensland Health spokesman said: “Queensland supports and can accommodate international arrivals approved by the Federal Government”.
“In fact, we welcome 1300 federally-approved international arrivals into our state each week — as agreed by national cabinet.”
BRING THEM HOME - Oct 21
GOLD Coaster Peter Morgan is one of thousands of Aussies trapped overseas unlikely to be home for Christmas because of “genuinely sickening political gaming”.
“To me it seems Australia started out like the UK with a suppression strategy, but then each state seemed to get into some kind of contest to see who could eliminate it,” he said.
“Now the whole country seems trapped in an elimination strategy, initiated at state level, that it will really struggle to dig itself out of without a vaccine.”
The Ormeau local travelled to the UK in early February after his terminally ill father became really sick. Sadly he died weeks after his arrival. After the March 20 funeral, Europe was heavily impacted by COVID-19 and Mr Morgan’s eldest son Conor had his scheduled operation for Crohn’s disease delayed indefinitely. The country was then in lockdown for three months.
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“I had to look after his needs and those of my bereaved mother through that,” he said, “then my son’s operation was rescheduled and completed in late June.”
After overseeing his son’s recovery in late August he booked a flight for November 19 because availability was already impacted by travel caps.
“I got bumped off that in mid-September. So I have missed my wife Maria for eight months now, and my middle son Sean who lives in Melbourne, and my youngest son Finn in Ormeau,” he said.
“I have missed him passing his driving test, his entire last year at school and his formal. I have never met his girlfriend and now it’s possible I might miss both Christmas and his 18th birthday as well.”
Mr Morgan is now on an Emirates waiting list for a flight later in November, but he’s doubtful he’ll get on “unless the government shows some will to fix this”.
It comes as the NT and Australian Governments make a deal to quarantine an estimated 5000 vulnerable citizens from the UK, South Africa and India in the Howard Springs facility on Darwin’s outskirts between now and March.
Mr Morgan said while the initiative was worthy, he questioned what would happen to the rest of the nearly 30,000 Australians registered with DFAT.
“It seems once that’s done the rest of the list is going to get binned and we’ll be left to fend for ourselves,” he said.
“With fruit pickers now allowed in and business travellers also now going in and out, I fear I may be caught in the backwash and not be able to make a flight stick with my Emirates economy ticket for a very long time.
“Currently thinking it will probably be after Christmas, but could be longer, much longer. Very distressing. And all caused by a genuinely sickening political gaming and a flawed elimination strategy.”
Mr Morgan is part of the Remove the Cap Facebook page, where thousands of citizens stuck overseas, due to caps on international arrivals, discuss cancelled flights and the latest government announcements.
Increasingly, members are discussing their worsening mental health and how they’re “addicted to social media, I’m so desperate for some good news,” wrote one user.
Mr Morgan said he was luckier than hundreds of other Aussies because he had a job and could live with his mother, but he was still “staggered at the way the government is treating us”.
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