Coronavirus: Exemptions sent packing as WA gets back on road

Tricia Easton emerged from chemotherapy just as travel outside the city limits was banned as part of WA’s swift and decisive response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Tricia and Brian Easton are packed and ready for a road trip to their bush block in WA’s Margaret River area. Picture: Colin Murty

Tricia Easton emerged from chemotherapy just as travel outside the city limits was banned as part of Western Australia’s swift and decisive response to the corona­virus pandemic.

Five weeks on, Mrs Easton and her husband of 55 years, Brian, are delighted to have been granted an exemption to leave their Perth home and camp 270km south at their bush block. They have been shown compassion as the McGowan government hints that tough travel bans it introduced on March 31 will be eased — for some regions at least — on Sunday.

“I really do appreciate the way the police considered the nature of our request,” Mr Easton said on Thursday. Last week, as WA began successive days of zero new corona­virus cases, the Eastons decided it was the right time to ask for leniency. Mr Easton, a 78-year-old JP and a senior public servant for decades, is not a rule-breaker by nature. He sent a polite email to police, who enforce WA’s state of emergency laws, including manning checkpoints on the boundaries of the state’s nine regions.

Within the application’s 600-character limit, he explained his wife was in recovery and they would love to take their van to their peaceful rural property for a few days. The WA Police Force on Wednesday said yes.

They couple has packed supplies into the customised van they bought in 2012 and folded clothes into two leather suitcases Mrs Easton inherited from her parents. Soon, they will be cooking outdoors and drinking shiraz with blue wrens and kestrels swirling above. “It is just lovely to listen to the birds there,” Mrs Easton said.

Their exemption is not unprecedented, though the WA Labor government has never spelled out what qualifies as compassionate grounds. As WA recorded its eighth day in a row with no new cases on Thursday, and those in the state with coronavirus fell to 11, expectations grew that the exemptions system could soon be moot.

According to WA Police on Thursday morning, 576,051 people had been stopped at regional checkpoints since April 1. Of those, 566,119 were either essential workers or allowed through because they had some form of exemption: medical appointments, the need to travel to care for a family member or compassionate reasons.

So far 9932 people have been turned away. However, several travellers caught using backroads have been summonsed to appear in court, where they face fines of up to $50,000.