Traffic chaos on the NSW-Victoria border as drivers rush to beat midnight deadline

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Police officers resorted to waving cars with Victorian number plates through border checkpoints to alleviate the traffic crush.

Deputy Police Commissioner Rick Nugent said public health authorities deemed it the safest method to deal with the dangers of leaving children and elderly people waiting in cars for hours.

“When it’s really clear it’s a holidaymaker, Victorian plates, a whole family, the risk is low,” he said.

He said every car with NSW or non-Victorian license plates was checked.

By lunchtime on Friday, Victorian police said the average wait time at border crossings was 15 minutes.

Readers who wrote to The Age and Sydney Morning Herald overnight said they moved at snail’s pace as cars rushed to the border en masse, sometimes on single-lane highways.

Social media posts from holidaymakers returning to Victoria reported delays of up to six hours.

Mark Bernhard wrote: “Took six hours last night, from joining the queue at 10pm to get through crossing at Genoa. Absolute debacle, but police doing an exceptional job. Who signed off on the logistics and have they learned any lessons? Do they care about the inconvenience and ruined holidays with hours’ notice?”

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Andrew Grange said he “joined the traffic on the Cobb highway 3 kilometres from the Echuca bridge and moved 100 metres in an hour. A number of people are out [of their cars] walking their dogs.”

Chelsea Dabner said “a friend of mine is 20 kilometres from Genoa border and the line is not moving. They are trying to get across by midnight.”

Emma Morris, from Yarra Glen, chose to drive across the border at Genoa on Friday morning, which meant that she and her husband, Wayne, avoided the massive queues on New Year’s Eve.

However, their luck ran out when the police officer greeting them at the border noticed smoke coming from the wheel bearings of the boat trailer they were towing. After a couple of hours they were back on the road.

“In Bermagui [NSW] people were just packing up and getting out when they could.

“Our friends who left last night told us it took them six hours to get across, they were 30 kilometres from the border and slowly crawled.

“We were a little bit confused as to when the cut-off point was to come back without having to quarantine. It was just crazy because we were really only given seven hour’s notice, that’s why everyone panicked.”

Nathan Goring crossed the border at Albury at 2.30pm on Friday on his way to Mansfield after waiting about an hour. He said the situation wasn’t too stressful, but noted the traffic banked up quickly at busy periods.

“I wouldn’t like to be there after 6pm tonight,” he said. “It will be a shit fight.”

Victoria’s testing chief, Jeroen Weimar, said anyone waiting in line at 11.59pm on Friday evening would be allowed to pass through.

“If you’re in NSW and you want to be back in Victoria you need to leave now,” he said.

“Please prepare for a lengthy wait at the border so make sure you have fuel, water, food and whatever you need to isolate safely when you get home.”

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Victorians will be turned away at the border if they arrive in queues after midnight and will not be allowed to enter hotel quarantine unless they had exceptional circumstances, Mr Weimar said.

People from Greater Sydney, Wollongong and the Blue Mountains are now barred from entering Victoria. People in regional NSW have until midnight tonight to cross the border.

“We need to close the border because we do not wish to continue to import high-risk

COVID cases back into Victoria … We do not think that would be right or fair for the Victorian community,” Mr Weimar said. “[This] is a very challenging thing to do and we do not ask it lightly.”

“Let’s be very clear – we do not have capacity to put hundreds of people into hotel quarantine because they elected to come home late.

“If you’re going to come home, come home today. If you’re not, that’s fine, but we’re not planning to provide alternative accommodation for you.

“If there are people who’ve gone to NSW, we did not design and set up a hotel quarantine system to enable people who’ve gone on holidays in NSW to come back a bit later.”

“We’re not running a hotel quarantine scheme for convenience. We’ve been very clear for a number of weeks now around the risks of travelling to NSW,” Mr Weimar said.

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On December 21, announcing the border closure to people from NSW hotspots, Premier Daniel Andrews said “as a returning Victorian [if] you arrive after midnight Monday then you will go into mandatory hotel quarantine”.

There are about 70 people in Victorian quarantine hotels who had returned from NSW and, for differing reasons, could not quarantine in their Victorian homes or find accommodation in NSW.

Jessica said the border controls were not what her friends expected after they drove back from NSW without being questioned about movements, having carefully avoided hotspots.

“How is this going to stop people who won’t tell the truth about where they have been? Another friend wasn’t even stopped, just waved through at the border.”

The border troubles caused an influx of calls to the Victorian Health Department’s hotline. The department said in a tweet late on Thursday that it understood the situation was stressful and directed people to a website.

Anyone who enters Victoria from NSW must now get tested and isolate for two weeks at their home.

Health Minister Martin Foley warned on Thursday morning, before the government announced the “hard” border closure, that Victorians currently in NSW needed to return immediately if they wanted to be able to return home.

The announcement came after eight cases were recorded in Victoria in two days and as 10 cases were recorded in NSW on Thursday.

The Victorian outbreak is likely to have been set in motion by Victorian who had returned from NSW and dined at a Thai restaurant with others on December 21.

“You do not want to be caught on the wrong side of a rapidly evolving situation,” Mr Foley said.

“This is a very serious situation. Victorians who have sacrificed so much are not going to go back to a situation where we faced what we did in the past winter.”

Rules will soon be announced by the state government to allow travel across the border by residents of border communities and arrangements for freight will remain in place.

Albury councillor Murray King told Nine News on Thursday he hoped “both the Acting Premier of Victoria and the Premier of NSW realise the impact these decisions have on local people and the way they do business.”