Our grandsons live on Perth, Western Australia. That state of Australia has become known as the ‘Hermit Kingdom’ because since Covid arrived in Australia in early 2020, its government has locked itself away from not only every other part of Australia, but the entire world. Covid has now inevitably become prevalent in Western Australia and they had no choice but to remove their travel restrictions.
We knew that the state was going to open its borders soon, se we planned a visit for the week before Easter. Our grandsons will be on school holiday then and we can stay on in Perth over the Easter period. It will be over two years since we have seen our Perth based family. We have airfares and accommodation booked although we made sure that our arrangements were fully cancellable just in case a problem arose.
Every other state in Australia is now free to enter and travel is unlimited. Very few restrictions remain anywhere in Australia. However, to enter Western Australia, one needs government approval via their G2G Pass. We applied for a pass online today and we were successful. So, here we come!
Whilst it was worth the effort of spending 30 minutes for each of us to apply for this pass (visa), one would think that we were travelling to another country – not just another part of Australia!
The first step in this convoluted process was to register for Western Australia’s Covid Monitoring System (Services WA). This required us to register and upload our full vaccination certificate that we first had to obtain from the Federal Government’s Medicare website. Then we had to apply for WA’s G2G Pass. Not only did we have to outline all our complete travel arrangements (place of origin, destination, flight numbers, port of entry, time and date of arrival etc), we had to upload an image of our driver’s licenses to prove our residential address and the front page of our passports to prove our identities.
Fair Dinkum, we are only going to another part of Australia, not overseas to a country like Zimbabwe or Argentina!
Right through the time of Covid, Western Australia has set itself apart. It still continues by making travel as onerous as it is to enter a foreign country. It’s now easier to enter the UK or Singapore. For us, it was worth the effort, but we hope that over time, sensibility will reign and we can return later in the year without all these ridiculous controls.
We’re very happy for you both that at last you’ll be able to see your Perth family. Those boys will certainly have grown! xxoo
Congrats Bruce & Jill.
We knew you would get there,
eventually…..!!
You must be thrilled to bits.
Tony & Marg