A short story from life…
The blockade runner
A true story from the panemic
IT STARTED when the French Canadian backpacker stepped aboard the Spirit of Tasmania, the ferry that carriers people and vehicles across the 250km width of Bass Strait. Destination: Devonport.
Some time on the 12 or so hour journey she takes out her phone and opens her facebook app.
“I’ve just come from Brisbane ha ha. I’m on the boat now,” she types. “Are there other backpackers who want to get an AirBnB when we land?”.
This is where her troubles start. With the pandemic in full rage on the mainland, Tasmania had closed its borders. The state’s self-imposed quarantine to prevent the Covid virus entering followed Tasmania’s own outbreak. The quick, sharp lockdown that followed succeeded in removing the virus from its shores. No one wanted to see it return. Entry to the state for non-essential travellers was made illegal. The government’s move had widespread Tasmanian support. Separated by the width of Bass Strait and with only essential travellers on the infrequent flights coming into the state, local people now felt safer in their isolation.
Within the now-virus-free state we were free to travel, and that evening we were gathered around a friend’s table up in the north. Dinner was finished but not the fruity Tasmanian white wine. My friend was offering food scraps to the overfed possum that knew that when people were sitting around the table under the awning, so was free food. That done, she returned to the table to relate to us the short-lived saga of the French Canadian backpacker. We sipped the smooth sweet liquid as my friend related the story.
“I saw her post on the backpackers’ facebook”, my friend said. “What she didn’t know is that other eyes were watching. You know that I run an AirBnB at the lower end of the market. I host Tasmanians travelling within the state. Were the virus to be brought in by people like this backpacker, and people who live in my house and their close contacts pick it up, two cafes, an animal rescue centre and other premises and businesses they work at or frequent would have to be locked down. I didn’t like the risk this backpacker would expose us to. I’m also in the vulnerable age group for this virus.”
My friend had so far eluded the virus, thanks to her wariness. With the cessation of tourism, the state’s main money earner, and with the disease having been eradicated in the state, the chance of picking it up would only come from its introduction by essential travellers or from illegal blockade runners like the French Canadian woman. The few people coming into the state who were carrying the virus spent two weeks in one of the quarantine hotels.
Around the table that night was a retired educator from down south, a young man from Adelaide who had been caught in the state when his own state imposed a lockdown—he was now living in one of my friend’s spare rooms—a local woman who was an accomplished singer, and myself, up from the southeast coast. None of us had caught the disease. All of us wanted to keep it that way. That accounts for what my friend went on to tell us.
“You know that I’m no snitch”, she said. “I wouldn’t dob anyone in to the authorities. In normal circumstances, that is. And the pandemic is far from normal. And me and the people who live here, our situation is too vulnerable.
“So after I saw this French Canadian woman’s facebook post I contacted the coronavirus hot line. After being shunted around a few places I finally got in touch with the police in Devonport. I passed on what the backpacker had written and asked the policewoman if she would take it seriously.
“Let me tell you what happens’”, she told me. ‘“We meet the ferry and check peoples’ residences. If they are not Tasmanians and they are coming from a Covid hotspot like Brisbane they are taken directly to two weeks in a quarantine hotel.”
So, that was the fate of the French Canadian backpacker. No finding an AirBnB with other travellers. Instead, two weeks of enforced, boring stay in a government monitored room in some pandemic hotel. Detention, not wandering freely to infect others in this Covid-free state was the price of her running the blockade.
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