From Ireland to Perth (VIA HOTEL QUARANTINE IN BRISBANE) BY DEBBIE CASHMAN If you are lucky enough to be granted an exemption to visit Ireland, or unlucky enough to need it, mandatory hotel quarantine is par for the course. These days depending on which route you take, you may need to do it on either side of the big trip. As if having a loved one at home in Ireland sick or dying isn’t hard enough! Saying that, I count my blessings everyday that I was able to get back home to Cork last January to spend my Dad’s last few weeks with him, he got to see myself and my three kids and was surrounded by family in the end.
kids sleeping on airport benches, then onto Doha, where you are praying your Covid tests a couple of days earlier are still valid, before an eventual flight to Brisbane – because it’s any port in a storm! It ain’t home but it’s as close as we can get for now! The past few months in Ireland I would joke about the trauma I had ahead of me, being locked in a hotel room with 3 kids, ok, I was only half joking. I knew, like the trip I had just done, it was not going to be fun, but it was a case of get the head down and just get through it, as freedom beckoned on the other end. After four months of lockdown in Ireland, it was enough of a carrot to dangle!
We were brought through the airport by the police with the rest of the overseas potential contaminants, and processed, processed, processed, even In an Ireland that my passport had jet lag! After was ravaged by a few hours we were assigned Coronavirus at the a hotel in Brisbane city, other time, we were the families were being sent to lucky ones, just to the Gold Coast, which I knew be there. After he was another hour or two on passed, we had to a bus so I was happy enough wait months to get to get somewhere closer. Our flights back to Perth, cohort were taken by police and just when our and army to the city, we were Top: Happily reunited at home. Above: The empty airports we travelled eventual flights forbidden to take photos or film through on our way home to Perth home were coming of this surreal escort, not quite to fruition, they got the cead mile failte you like cancelled in early May. The lady who we after travelling for 3 days, but with Covid raging through India, booked our flights with was great, she and the rest of the world far from having a full handle on this answered emails at 2.30am her time and pandemic, there was a huge relief in just being back into the desperate phone calls at 3.30am my time. safety of Australia. From Ireland having over a thousand cases We got flights booked, not the usual one a week for months, you’d be constantly and anxiously trying to avoid people and surfaces, where as here in Australia, you hop from Dublin to Doha and then onto would be very unlucky to catch it. Perth, but Dublin to Germany overnight, 50 | THE IRISH SCENE
