Coronavirus: Queensland is closed one day, open the next … beautiful!

Cars packed with interstate holidaymakers clogged the roads leading into Queensland on Friday, as the state’s borders finally reopened to non-Victorians.

Gold Coast entrepreneur Carly Snodgrass, right, with local artist Ellie Hopley and her dog Toast at Burleigh Heads on Friday. Picture: Luke Marsden

Cars packed with interstate holiday-makers clogged the roads leading into Queensland on Friday, as the state’s borders finally reopened to visitors — except Victorians.

Police at border checkpoints intercepted some vehicles with Victorian number plates, and randomly stopped others, as traffic backed up for kilometres and ­motorists were forced to wait more than half an hour to cross the threshold into Queensland.

Gold Coast chief superintendent Mark Wheeler said the traffic was moving slowly but smoothly, and urged people to postpone their travel if they could.

He warned travellers with children to pack snacks and water for the inevitable delays. “Midday came, and it was ­almost like New Year’s Eve. It’s great that we are open, but we’ve got a commonsense approach with this, and we’ve got to show patience and understanding,” he said.

There have been more than 314,000 online applications for the Queensland border pass since midday on July 3. No one who has been in Victoria in the past 14 days is allowed into Queensland, apart from Queensland residents, who will have to pay for their own mandatory hotel quarantine.

There are some other minor exceptions, such as people visiting dying relatives.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s decision to close the state’s border in March for the first time since 1919 was met with concern from the tourism-dependent border city of the Gold Coast. The city’s tourism industry has weathered a financial hit of more than $1.2bn.

Gold Coast local Carly Snod­grass runs three businesses that are heavily dependent on the region’s lifestyle: a tourism T-shirt company, an event ticketing enterprise and a tourism magazine.

Ms Snodgrass welcomed the border reopening but said it was happening too late.

“It was just a bit late for Annastacia Palaszczuk to decide the border lifting,” she told The Weekend Australian. “We might get that last week of school holidays (in NSW) in addition to any Queensland travellers. We just hope more people show.”

Bruce Robson and Luke Young run the Iron and Resin ­Garage at Currumbin Waters, a cafe and motorcycle accessories shop that caters for motorbiking day-trippers, particularly those zipping through the border.

The cafe and shop closed completely during April and is still only operating as a takeaway. Mr Robson is optimistic about the border reopening but says some people might still be deterred.

“What sort of open border has a police checkpoint and a 20-minute traffic jam? It’s a minor inconvenience and if you want to protect people you need to do it, but the words ‘the border is open’ are not fair,” he said.