Day 1: Travelling from Melbourne to Sydney

The taxi picked us up and off we went to Melbourne Airport. It felt liberating to leave the previous 5 km travel zone which had defined our world for many weeks until just recently. Seeing the Melbourne CBD go past was a bit like visiting a foreign country/

The taxi driver had been really surprised to get a job going to the airport as so few people were flying these days. We were all wearing masks and the interior air was being circulated madly with the windows down or the air conditioner running.

Approaching the airport, the road was completely devoid of the distinctive Melbourne yellow cabs, which in normal times are ubiquitous when nearing the airport.

The next sign that things were definitely different was the near ghost town that was the long term carpark. This is normally near full most days but now only had a few lonely cars, and a lot of grass sprouting through the concrete ...


Also evident was the relative emptiness of every part of the airport we saw ... the normally bustling drop off area, the Virgin terminal check in and the rest of the airport in general ...


The departures board showed one flight destined to leave that day from the Virgin terminal ....


Waiting for the flight to leave, it was amusing to hear the ground crew make a standard formal broadcast over the PA system ... "This is an announcement for flight VA863 going to Sydney" --- they could have just said "the flight" as there was very clearly only one.

Coming time to fly the plane was about one third full.


Wearing a face mask was mandatory in the airport area and on the plane, so it was quite appropriate that the safety messaging was updated ... prior to the pre-recorded safety briefing being played the cabin crew advised that "If you need to put on an oxygen mask then make sure you remove your face mask first".

Another sign of these Covid times was the lack of an airline magazine, be it for health reasons or the lack of demand ...


Upon arrival in Sydney we were met at the terminal not by a smiling flight attendant but with a procession of police, military and health personnel.

A key step was completing a health questionnaire and being assigned to a quarantine hotel. This was clearly a well oiled process.


We proceeded to a bus where friendly military personnel loaded our bags onto the bus, watched over by a fleet of police officers.



We had a police escort on our journey to the hotel, probably to stop us trying to sneak off the bus when it was stopped.


Our hotel for the night was the Radisson Blu hotel in downtown Sydney. Upon arrival a police officer boarded the bus and gave us yet more forms to complete, along with the memorable line "You'll be taken to your room and you won't be given an access card". Clearly the plan was that we were staying in our room and not going anywhere for the night.

Between exiting the bus and arriving at the lobby there were about 15 military and police officers, from directing us into the hotel and then meeting us in the lobby. We were first checked in by friendly hotel staff, who commented that they were a five star hotel and tried to maintain those standards, although that was a little difficult under the rules of "the occupation".

Police officers then entered the details from our forms and advised of the next steps. Clearly being administrators wasn't their career goal when they joined up but they had adapted to the new normal, even if there was some confusion along the way. There is no question though that all of the people involved in the massive quarantine effort are doing a good job going by the case numbers we've got.


At long last we got to our room on the second floor of the hotel, which was quite a comfortable space.


It was at this point we realised what it would be like being potentially cooped up in a similar room in NZ for 14 days straight, with no guarantee of being able to leave for brief exercise periods. So this is what we've signed up for ...

Thankfully some dinner was delivered soon after and we were able to collapse. Sleep took a while as we were quite wired from the whole day's experience.

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