The wait to touch down is over

The wait to touch down in Australia is finally over as international borders open.

After almost two years, Huyen Thanh, from Hanoi Vietnam, has not only been reunited with her daughter in Australia but has also met her grandson for the first time in person.

“My first step out of immigration to Gold Coast airport was like stepping into a new world where I could see, hug my two loveliest people”.

“The moment that I hugged Ollie [her grandson] in my arms- all the stress was left behind,” she said.

Huyen recalled the day will spend the next three months in Australia, soaking up this precious time with her family.

Huyen recalled she had “mixed and broken emotions with a lot of tears” on February 7 when she first heard that Australia’s international borders were finally opening on February 21.

The news came on the same day that her 6-month-old grandson, Ollie, went to his first orientation for day-care.

“I messaged my daughter to let her know and asked her to bring Ollie home because I promised Ollie when his mum has to go back to work, I will come and he won’t have to go to day-care,” she said.

When Huyen’s daughter, Chi, moved from Hanoi to study on the Gold Coast, they normally visited each other twice a year.

It all changed when the pandemic hit and Huyen said, “it’s been the hardest two years of my [her] life”.

“My husband passed away when my daughter was 12 years old- my family is the two of us, living, travelling and do everything together,” she added.

Huyen said she felt helpless being so far away during her daughter’s pregnancy.

“Everyone knows how pregnancy is a hard time for any woman and I would have loved to be with her, but I couldn’t because of the border closing,”

“My daughter and her partner had to overcome the hardest time together,” she said.

While this was a challenging time for Huyen to be apart from her daughter, she was determined to be ready for when Australia opened their international borders.

Huyen had her first vaccination in Vietnam on April 29 when only 0.5% of the population had been vaccinated with their first dose.

“When Omicron came, Australia started to call people to get their booster, I also got my booster here,” she said.

“I did whatever the Australia government required just to make myself ready to get on one of the very first flights when they open border,” Huyen added.

Similar to Huyen, Verena Porcher from Berlin was also eagerly awaiting the news as to when Australia would open up to the rest of the world.

After becoming close friends with an Australian girl living in Berlin, the two had plans to travel to Australia together, however her friend returned home during the pandemic in 2020.

“We thought we had to wait another year or two and she went alone but as soon as Australia announced to open for tourists, I booked my flight to make it happen,” Verena said.

Initially Verena already plans to spend five weeks working remotely in Sri Lanka so she quickly made the decision to reorganize everything.

“Obviously, going to Australia won since I thought it was a one-time chance to go experience it with my Australian friend,” she said.

After a cancelled flight the night before, Verena finally arrived in Australia on 22 February and couldn’t be more relieved.

“I’m really glad everything worked out - I didn’t want to put my hopes too high and could only relax once I stepped foot on Sydney grounds out of the airport,” she said.

There’s no doubt that getting to Australia didn’t come without its challenges.

“A bunch of questions were unclarified, and no one seemed to know the answer,” she said.

“I was also generally anxious rules might change again or that I’d do something wrong in all the paperwork needed,” she added.

The introduction of the new Digital Passenger Declaration (DPD) form, replacing the previous Australia Travel Declaration form, caused some pre-departure stress for Verena.

“They introduced a new travel form that was buggy and didn’t work at first. I had to connect to other travellers online and together we figured out how to deal with this,” she said.

“There were so many information websites from the immigration office online that you could potentially read forever and still would have the feeling you’re missing something,” she added.

While Verena said she felt “honoured and happy” to be one of the first few tourists arriving in Australia, “at the same time this caused a lot of stress.”

Verena said once she made it to border control who were “representing the last thing standing between me [her] and my [her] Australian experience”, she realized “all would be fine in the end”.