C was about to finish her 14 days quarantine in a Sydney hotel when the COVID-19 scare resumed, with state premiers talking about restrictions, permits and even quarantine for travellers from the Sydney area. Just what the rules were going to be was unclear; there was mention of permits, but at that stage there was no means of obtaining one on any of the relevant websites. But as she was just finishing 14 days quarantine, the thought – even if only a remote possibility – of another quarantine period did not appeal to C. And on top of this the airline was sending text messages about changing her flight (the original flight was cancelled, in spite of the demand – go figure), scheduled for the day after she was due to leave quarantine.
Uncertain times and vague rules call for decisive action, and C was up to the task. A rental car was booked (not cheap!), and within 15 minutes of exiting quarantine (the only time when she was out-&-about in Sydney, and then in an Uber), she was at the depot, getting ready to get out of NSW.
She crossed the border at Wodonga at 11.45 pm, before the restrictions supposedly kicked in at midnight – although she reports that there were no visible signs of anything about to happen at that time. Perhaps in hindsight, she had a little more time, but we’ve certainly seen since then that things can change very quickly.
After a night’s accommodation “safely” on the Victorian side and a more leisurely trip than the previous day down the highway, she was with us the next afternoon. One of the first tasks? Catching up with the laundry!
A fairly dramatic conclusion to a memorable-for-the-wrong reasons trip back from the US.
Musings and Mutterings 
In the time to come there will be many stories of daring escapes from Sydney on Friday 18 December. At noon we were at Drummoyne, Sydney, at a funeral for a dear friend. The afternoon forecast was for dreadful thunder and lightning, We found out abut the midnight permit system -we had a second night to in our hotel – but did not fancy a potential several months stay… So overcoming fear of stormy flying we rang our Melbourne travel agent and at vast expense changed our flight by a day to what were told were the last two seats available- the change cost about double our existing tickets. Back to city checkout of hotel and in the early afternoon settled in for an expected three hour airport wait. The plane was cancelled by an engineering failure but substituted carriage take off was eventually achieved to deliver us to Melbourne about 9.30pm. Before midnight was all we needed . On arrival we were handed instructions parsing status. If we had any off-feeling at all we must go straight to Mickleham Rd for a test and subsequent isolation. We decided we felt well enough to direct our cab to our home address.
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