Coronavirus: Shutters fall on Easter getaways

Australians are being ordered to scrap their Easter holiday plans.

The crowds vanished from Surfers Paradise on Monday. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Australians are being ordered to scrap their Easter holiday plans with some states threatening hefty fines for anyone who attempts to stay in their holiday home or ­rental accommodation amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Across the country the owners of private holiday homes are being ordered to remain at their usual city addresses to avoid an influx of people into regional towns.

In Western Australia, police roadblocks will be in place to stop anyone other than locals from travelling to coastal towns.

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall said the state’s estimated 20,000 shack owners should cancel their Easter and school holiday breaks to avoid mass movements of people to small towns on the coast and along the Murray River. There are growing calls for Kangaroo Island to close to anyone other than residents, with locals fearing an influx of holiday-makers over the school holiday fortnight.

Permanent residents of the town with SA’s oldest population, the south coast retirement haven of Victor Harbor, are also pleading with Adelaide shack owners to keep away.

Amid rising fears of an influx in remote holiday towns the message from Mr Marshall was clear: “Stay home.

“We just couldn’t be clearer. This is an Easter and these are school holidays when we are asking people to stay at home. It’s as simple as that. It’s not a time for people to be gallivanting around the state.

“I know it’s difficult. I know a lot of families have promised their kids that they’re going away at Easter, that they going to catch some fantastic king george whiting off the SA coast, but that’s just going to have to wait.”

In Queensland, police will be “heavily patrolling” beaches during the Easter long weekend and are warning people not to travel to their holiday homes, as authorities crack down on “blatant” breaches of coronavirus rules.

The Royal Queensland Show, the Ekka, has been cancelled for only the third time in its history as Queensland Health officials prepare to turn the showground into a field hospital in a worst-case scenario where hospitals overflow.

Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said officers had issued 139 $1300 fines in the past week to people for getting too close to each other in parks, breaching quarantine orders, and being caught travelling for “non-essential” reasons, including motorcyclists out for a ride.

“(People) need to stay in their village, exercise in their village and only travel from their home from essential reasons. What we were finding were people travelling from Brisbane to go to the Gold Coast beaches to exercise or have a swim, you should be doing this in your local area,” Ms Carroll said.

Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate will close three of the region’s most popular beaches — the Spit, Surfers Paradise, and Coolangatta — from midnight on Tuesday, and has warned he will shut more if people flout the rules.

He said people from Brisbane and Logan had flocked to the beaches on the weekend, and should stay away.

“The curve is starting to flatten; this is not the time to relax and let it bounce back,” Mr Tate said. “We’ve just got to kill it off.”

West Australian Premier Mark McGowan has already banned non-essential travel between the state’s nine regions, and inside the far-north Kimberley residents are confined to one of four local government areas.

But on Friday he created another travel ban inside the Goldfields-Esperance region in anticipation of the annual Easter rush from the landlocked goldmining hub of Kalgoorlie to the picturesque port of Esperance.

Esperance, a farming community with popular beaches, is now ­effectively closed to outsiders even if they live in the same region.

Police will patrol the town’s main entry points this Easter at the request of the local shire, which feared thousands of holiday-makers from Kalgoorlie could bring coronavirus to the town which has yet to record a case.

There was confusion in NSW in relation to Airbnbs yesterday when Minister Better Regulation and Innovation Kevin Anderson was quoted as saying short-term accommodation had been declared illegal and that there was “zero reason for someone to stay in an Airbnb.

However both the Minister and Airbnb clarified the position overnight saying Airbnb was still operating with the Minister saying “in these circumstances the provision of short-term accommodation is often critical particularly for our frontline health workers”.