Caravans to trickle into Central Australia as quarantine rules ease
CARAVAN park operators in Alice Springs are looking forward to welcoming more visitors from interstate as well as the Northern Territory as travel restrictions ease.
Northern Territory
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ABOUT 10 people crossed the border from South Australia to the NT by road on Monday with two booking in to the BIG4 MacDonnell Range Holiday Park in Alice Springs to self-isolate.
Border restrictions eased in the Territory on Monday allowing people arriving from interstate to self-isolate at their accommodation of choice, including caravan parks, rather than fork out $2500 for mandatory hotel quaratine
BIG4 MacDonnell Range Holiday Park operator Brendan Heenan said he was looking forward to having more grey nomads come into the Territory to boost business.
“Yesterday morning there was about 10 people who came through the South Australian border and two of those are booked into the park. We can take them now and they have to self-isolate,” he said.
“They just have to get supermarkets to deliver any food and stuff like that because they can’t shop at this stage.
“Usually at this time of year we are chockers and have about 1000 people in the caravan park. At the moment we only have about 50 here.”
“We would hope people hop in their caravans and come into the NT. Millions of Australians go overseas and spent billions every year so we hope for the next year people stay in Australia and visit the NT.”
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People self-isolating at caravan parks cannot use shared facilities such as toilets and showers.
Alice Springs Tourists Park manager Rachel Bradley said people could not quarantine at the park because there wasn’t enough capacity for arrivals to isolate at the caravan park, which also provides accommodation for permanent residents.
“We aren’t taking people to quarantine here because we don’t have en suites and we can’t have people using shared toilets and showers,” she said.
“But we are taking NT residents who are allowed to move freely now that biosecurity laws have gone down.
“We’ve had a couple of people come down from Darwin and it’s nice to see people in the Territory moving around and wanting to explore Alice Springs.”
People who need to travel for more than an hour before they reach their destination will need to outline planned fuel and rest stops and overnight accommodation details in a Border Arrival Form, which is completed on arrival to the NT.
Originally published as Caravans to trickle into Central Australia as quarantine rules ease