Residents of towns along the Victoria-New South Wales border were united in bewilderment on Tuesday, even as they shared widely diverging views on who, if anyone, was to blame for the imminent closure of the crossings introduced suddenly to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
“The hardest thing for everyone is not knowing,” said Deb O’Callaghan, the owner of the holiday park DC on the Lake at Mulwala, on the NSW side of the border.
The closures have already forced holidaymakers along the Murray River, which divides the two states, to cancel their trips, or cut them short.
With no visitors allowed from Victoria for the foreseeable future, O’Callaghan is set to lose thousands of dollars in bookings, although she said: “If we could be really positive about this, Yarrawonga-Mulwala is not usually a high-profile destination in the dead of winter … The phone has rung hot this morning with people just uncertain of what the border closure will entail. We really have no idea.”
The feeling was the same right along the Murray, which is crossed in about 55 places. From Mildura to just south of Eden, Victoria is essentially being cut off from the rest of Australia as it battles to contain Covid-19. A further 191 new cases were reported on Tuesday.
The drastic step to close the Victoria-NSW border for the first time in more than a century has split families, will greatly increase travel times and cause chaos for residents who have to cross the border for work, health, school or supplies.
Many areas have twin communities that span the divide, including Albury-Wodonga, Corowa-Wahgunyah, Yarrawonga-Mulwala, Cobram-Barooga and Echuca-Moama.
Many residents said they were paying for Melbourne’s failure to control the spread of the coronavirus.
Sean Farrer lives in the small Victorian town of Bethanga, a hamlet a short drive to the east of Albury, in NSW, but cut off from the nearest Victorian towns by Lake Hume.
Residents who are unable to obtain a permit now face the prospect of lengthy travel times just go to the supermarket, if they are forced to remain in Victoria.
Farrer said his drive to work would be at least an extra hour one way if he could not cross into NSW.
“I think the worst thing is the unknown,” he said. “They’ve just announced this without any thought on how it works. The little towns will be worst affected.”
Ray Booth lives in Bellbridge, along the Victorian bank of Lake Hume. Like many in the town, he regularly crosses the border into NSW.
“I’m kind of hoping they will have some common sense,” he said. “They should have the closure to NSW going into Albury [north of the state border].”
“If they do it at Bellbridge … that would put another hour’s drive on it and it’s a bad, windy road.”
Booth says the region is paying for Melbourne’s spike in coronavirus. “We’re paying for that stupid Labor bloke down there [the premier, Daniel Andrews],” he said.
Albury-Wodonga, with a population of about 100,000, is the community worst affected by the closure.
Many live in one city and work in the other, and they share a healthcare system that operates on both sides of the border. The maternity ward is in Victoria and the cancer centre in NSW.
“We just don’t know how it’s going to work,” said Farrer, whose mother is being treated in the cancer centre. “Even if I do get a permit, am I still able to go to the cancer centre?
“It just affects so much of our lives, people don’t realise we have to go into NSW. At some point someone has to take responsibility. To punish rural areas for the mistakes in the city is just ridiculous.”
One business literally at the centre of the closure is the La Maison restaurant, which backs on to the Murray River.
It is inside Victoria on the Lincoln Causeway, yet is closer to Albury (in NSW) than it is to Wodonga (in Victoria). The checkpoint is likely to be near its front door.
Its owner, Wassim Saliba, said the border closure could force him to shut up shop.
“It could be not worth it,” he said. “I’d like to think it will be business as usual, but I think we’ll be quite restricted. The majority of our customers are Albury-based and we are a meeting point.”
He said business had begun to recover in June after a tough few months under the initial coronavirus restrictions, but now “it’s all going down the drain”.
Some Albury-Wodonga businesses are looking at imaginative ways to deal with the border closure.
The Albury bike store Cycle Station is considering opening up a pop-up shop in Wodonga to serve its Victorian customers.
“When they had the lockdown last time we were lucky, we actually benefited,” the assistant manager, Christie Walker, said. “We actually saw a rise in bike sales when all the sporting clubs and gyms shut down.
“We’re trying to look at it in the most positive way that we can. We’ve had a few people calling up wanting to cancel repairs, [but] what we are doing is offering pick-up and delivery. For some of our customers their bike is their only form of transportation.”
Despite the hardship, O’Callaghan said she thought the closure was the right decision. “I don’t blame anyone,” she said. “It’s four weeks out of a lifetime …
“I never thought the borders would close, I was surprised by that. But I understand the NSW premier closing the border. It absolutely makes sense.”