Community spirit vanishes in border’s Bermuda Triangle

SA’s hard border closure has divided the people of Murrayville and Pinnaroo in unexpected ways.

Lives torn apart: Bianca Niejalke is barred from the mothers group she runs because she lives 5km inside Victoria. Picture: Roy Van Der Vegt

The tiny Victorian town of Murrayville is just 20km east of the South Australian border and 27km from its “sister city” of Pinnaroo, the SA potato-growing town and main service centre in this sparsely-populated part of the Mallee where there have been zero cases of coronavirus.

The people of Murrayville are de facto South Australians. Adelaide is just three hours away, and they would no sooner make the six-hour trip to Melbourne than drive to Cairns or Darwin for a major shopping spree or medical appointment.

The people of Murrayville and Pinnaroo are also great friends — they socialise together, play sport together, celebrate their kids’ birthdays together.

 

At least they did, until a hard border closure was imposed this month by the SA government in response to Victoria’s COVID-19 spiral, which Premier Steven Marshall says will stay in place “for a very long time”.

As a result, Murrayville’s Victorian population of 280 is being shunned while 20 minutes away in Pinnaroo, life is back to normal for the 540 South Australian residents on the happier side of this ­arbitrary line.

The border closure, imposed vigilantly by SA Police with back-up from ADF personnel, is having perverse effects on life in the two towns. While the Victorian government has left state borders open, SA’s border closure means residents of Victorian border towns may only cross the border without 14 days quarantine if deemed to be essential travellers.

To streamline the process, SA Police created a “cross border community member” permit exempting border residents from the usual requirement of applying 72 hours in advance for permission to cross. But once they’re over the SA checkpoint, Victorian border residents are still barred from travelling beyond a maximum 50km radius, and are banned from entry for socialising, sport and non-­essential medical appointments.

“We live in the Bermuda Triangle,” registered nurse Di Thornton told The Weekend Australian. “I work mainly in Pinnaroo but live on the Victorian side of the border and it’s driving me nuts. The border is only a concept here. The lives of everyone in Pinnaroo and Murrayville are intertwined. With the half-hour time difference, I am so close that I leave for work in Victoria at 7.30am and am at my desk in SA at 7.20am.

“Friends used to come back and forth across the border to see each other all the time. All that has changed now with this hard border. It is really affecting people.”

Ms Thornton set up the Mallee Border Health Centre as a mobile health service to help offset the historic churn of doctors in the area.

Di Thornton who runs mobile health practice Mallee Border Health Centre. Picture: Roy Van Der Vegt

The service operates three days a week in Pinnaroo, and one in Murrayville. She has suspended the weekly one-day service in the Victorian town of Underbool because it is 81km away. Victorian patients who were booked in to see the visiting podiatrist and physiotherapist in Pinnaroo last week were turned away at the border on the grounds their appointments were non-essential.

Young father Guy Badman is a big part of the Pinnaroo community and loves the town. He owns a local coffee shop, The Groundsman, and his wife Bronwyn is a teacher at the local primary school. They have three children, aged five, four and two, but because the Badmans live in Murrayville they are all persona non grata on the streets of Pinnaroo after hours.

“I can spend the whole day running the coffee shop, talking to people and mingling with everyone, but after hours it’s like we are non-citizens. We have to get back to Victoria and stay out (of SA) until the working day resumes,” Mr Badman said.

“Our five year-old daughter is at school here but last week she wasn’t allowed to attend what would have been her first birthday party for one of her school friends as it was out of school hours.

Pinnaroo border coffee shop owner Guy Badman. Picture: Roy Van Der Vegt

“I’m also involved with the Pinnaroo Golf Club but all the people I see in town during the day and at the coffee shop I am banned from playing a round with because it’s sport, so it’s not exempt.”

Mr Badman said the hard border closure was having a dangerous effect of making Victorian border residents venture closer to Melbourne to access medical services or for business appointments. “It doesn’t make any sense and it is starting to cause friction between Murrayville people and Pinnaroo people because it’s pushing us further into Victoria,” he said.

“It is creating division now because people on the SA side are thinking: ‘Hang on, how far have they been into Victoria?’ We are basically being ostracised. And all this in an area where the nearest COVID case has been three hours away in Horsham.

“The thing is, none of us wants to go to Melbourne. I don’t even go into Murrayville. Pinnaroo is the main service centre and we go to Adelaide or Mildura for anything major. These rules mean we have to head closer to Melbourne, which is the least safe place in Australia right now.”

It’s the social life of the border communities that is being hardest hit by a lockdown designed to control a crisis 600km away. Even though community sports have now resumed in most of SA, in Pinnaroo the football and netball seasons have been cancelled because so many of the players live on the Victorian side of the border and are not allowed in.

Service clubs and community organisations have also been forced to cancel meetings. They include Border Bubs, a mothers group run by local women including young mum Bianca Niejalke, who lives with husband Wayne on a broadacre crop farm 5km east of the SA border in Victoria.

“I can’t see the SA girls in Border Bubs and I can’t go to meetings, and Wayne is on the local (agricultural) show committee and he’s not allowed to go to meetings either,” Ms Niejalke said.

“I can’t go to the Pinnaroo gym because that’s non-essential. We can’t even take our kids over for playgroup. Whether anyone admits it or not, there’s a real underlying divide now in our com­munity. We are one big com­munity but we are being left out in the cold. We feel so isolated.”

Beck Oakley runs a lovely clothing and gift store in Pinnaroo called Harvested, which she can still operate each day as it is deemed to be work. But she and her farmer husband Trent live on a large property that straddles the SA and Victorian border in an area known as Panitya, 2km east of SA.

Because their house is on the Victorian side of their property they’re banned from entering SA for anything but work.

Border Districts Motorbike Club secretary and owner of Peer Motors Simon Peters at his Pinnaroo garage. Pic Roy Van Der Vegt

“We have had to pull both our daughters out of all their extra-curricular stuff in Pinnaroo — netball, dance classes, footy — and they are not allowed to see their friends on the SA side of the border,” Ms Oakley said.

Pinnaroo motor mechanic Simon Peers runs Peers Motors, but because he lives in Murrayville he has to clear out each day at the end of his shift and return to Victoria. Mr Peers is also secretary of the Border Districts Motorbike Club, which just finished building a terrific new track, but none of the club’s Victorian members were ­allowed to attend its launch two Saturdays ago because it was deemed non-essential.

“It is creating two classes of citizens here,” Mr Peers said.

“There is quite a bit of tension now because people are being treated like second-class citizens. Why not just give us a handful of passes saying that we are all border locals and let us go about our business? No one is trying to do anything stupid, but there’s not one COVID case around here.

“This isn’t Melbourne and they are forcing us closer to Melbourne. Why the hell would ­anyone want to go to Melbourne anyway?”