Up to 200 athletes and Australian Olympic Committee staff will quarantine at the Centre for National Resilience

Howard Springs will become one of the unofficial sites of the Olympic after-party with the Australian team taking up residence after the Tokyo games.

HOWARD Springs will become one of the unofficial sites of the Olympic after-party with the Australian team taking up residence after the Tokyo games.

Up to 200 athletes and Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) staff will quarantine at the Centre for National Resilience while the majority – up to 400 – will isolate in hotels in Sydney and Brisbane.

But it is the relative openness of Howard Springs, where life is “like a holiday” for international arrivals doing their mandatory 14-day quarantine that is the venue most likely for post-Games fun, despite its no-alcohol policy.

Unlike big-city hotel quarantine for international arrivals – where travellers forfeit fresh air and the freedom to exercise – residents at Howard Springs are able to walk around the facility and enjoy Top End sunsets on their shared decks.

Rio gold medallist Kyle Chalmers said: “I think most of us staring down the barrel of quarantine want to go to Howard Springs.”

“As swimmers, we’ll compete the first week and then it’ll be straight back for quarantine … and the Olympics will be on the whole time,” he said.

“We’ll be there watching it in Howard Springs.”

Rugby Sevens star Charlotte Caslick, who also won gold in Rio, said: “We’re not sure what the set-up will be like but it will sort of be like a mini Olympic village.”

Unlike the Olympic bubble they have just left, Australia’s best athletes will likely find themselves mingling with other quarantining members of the public – albeit 1.5m apart.

Originally built to house 3000 workers employed on a major gas project, it is the preferred quarantine option for our returning athletes due to its relative freedoms and impressive safety record.

Since it opened to overseas returning travellers in October, more than 9000 people have completed their mandatory quarantine there behind cyclone fencing, without a single biosecurity breach.

Kyle Chalmers during the warm-up session of the Australian National Olympic Swimming Trials at SA Aquatic & Leisure Centre. o by Mark Brake/Getty Images)

Charlotte Caslick during the Oceania Sevens Challenge. Picture: Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images

This compares to the more than 20 quarantine leaks that have occurred in high-rise hotels in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, and most catastrophically, Melbourne, where two quarantine breaches last year caused an outbreak that killed 801 people and led Victoria into a four-month lockdown.

The athletes and support staff are expected to be housed in the “repatriation’’ side of the camp, which comprises rows of four cabins built along a shared deck, set out in narrow “streets’’.

If the athletes are required to abide by the same rules that currently exists for others, they will not be allowed to enter each other’s rooms, will not have access to gym equipment and will have to make do with their small cabins, which contain a single bed, ensuite, bar fridge, kettle and small TV with free-to-air channels.

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If athletes are governed by the same rules as the general public, they will not be allowed to take advantage of their welcome pack from Games officials, which includes 14 condoms each – a total of 160,000 contraceptives provided to the 11,000 athletes competing from across the globe, despite Covid social-distancing rules.

The NT government’s Covid-19 agency running the camp and the AOC declined to comment on what arrangements were being put in place for the returning Olympians.

Federal Sports Minister Richard Colbeck said the AOC had negotiated quarantine arrangements for returning athletes between states and territories.

“A contingent of athletes and their staff will enter quarantine at Howard Springs,’’ he said. “In addition, quarantine agreements with New South Wales and Queensland have also been confirmed.’’