Edwina Bartholomew: Australia’s track record on borders is not great

It feels like festive deja vu around holiday plans as we wait to see if state premiers will hold their nerve and keep borders open, says Edwina Bartholomew.

I’ve never been more thankful to be working on the weekend. It was Saturday when the news started filtering in about the new Covid variant, Omicron. By Sunday, the urgency around it had escalated.

Is it resistant to the vaccines? Is it more transmissible? Where in the world is the new variant spreading? What happened to all the other letters in the Greek alphabet? We are still working out all the answers.

I called my sister immediately in London to change her flight home.

Bit of background – my sister left Australia on Christmas Day 2019. She was able to meet my daughter just after she was born but that was the extent of it. We haven’t seen her since, save for FaceTime.

Booked originally to return in January, my brother and I concocted an elaborate plan to get her home for Christmas to surprise our parents. That was all now in jeopardy.

Australia doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to slamming our borders shut. Since March last year, Australians stuck overseas have struggled to get home because of caps on hotel quarantine and exorbitantly expensive flights.

If you don’t have relatives overseas, you probably don’t care.

But for those of us who do, this week was a long, long time coming. On Tuesday night, my sister finally touched down in Australia.

She is now quarantining in the back room of my parent’s house with socially distanced meals in the backyard and a daily Covid test.

It feels like festive deja vu around holiday plans as we wait to see if state premiers will hold their nerve and keep borders open for family reunions and long-awaited breaks.

Judging from the Love Actually-style airport reunions we’ve been seeing on the news, there are many more families like ours who have the very same wish for Christmas – that families can be together, around the same table, opening all the presents in person and falling asleep together on the couch full of ham and pudding.

I can tell you from experience, it’s worth the wait. Even just knowing my sister is here, in the same country, so, so close to us, is an amazing feeling.

Tomorrow, I get to introduce her to my nearly two-year-old in the actual flesh. We are going to decorate the Christmas tree together and then go to the Aquarium as a family.

It’s not really the homecoming we imagined but she is still home. It’s all I could possibly ask for this Christmas.

Originally published as Edwina Bartholomew: Australia’s track record on borders is not great