Kirstin Nicholson, The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper

“Just let us come home.” That is the plea from Kate Slater who is trying desperately to return home with her family to Gannawarra.

Kate Slater and her husband, Andrew, should be surrounded by their Australian family and friends and going about their lives here in Victoria. What should have been a dream chapter in their life has very quickly turned into a nightmare.

At the end of 2019, Kate discovered she was pregnant. After six years living in London, and with Kate’s visa about to expire, she and Andrew made the decision to move back to Gannawarra to be closer to Kate’s parents, Sue and Mark Bottcher, and start their next chapter in Australia. 

They aimed for a May 2020 return, but plans changed swiftly when COVID-19 emerged in March 2020. They toyed with the idea of jumping on a plane but with no maternity leave or jobs lined up in Australia, they decided the sensible decision when starting a family was to stay put. In addition, they were advised by the Australian Government to stay in England if they had secure jobs and a roof over their head, so they did. 

The stay meant Kate had to renew her visa and Andrew’s permanent Australian residency runs the risk of expiring before he can even get to Australia.

Thinking that the COVID-19 situation would be short-term, Sue and Kate’s sister, Bridget, made plans to travel to London for the birth of the baby in August and support Kate and Andrew through those first six weeks while Kate was on maternity leave. They would then help the young family move back to Australia. 

Instead of emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic and life resuming, Kate found herself in the midst of a 16-month English lockdown and instead of being surrounded by her support people, she found herself completely isolated. Not even Andrew was allowed at the hospital to welcome Beatrix into the world on August 14.

Since the birth of Beatrix, the family has been monitoring the flight situation. Flights have been ludicrously expensive and notoriously unreliable says Kate. 

They were on the list of 181 parents in the ‘Fly the Babies Home’ campaign late last year. The campaign was initiated by an Australian woman living in London to get London’s ‘lockdown babies’ and their families home. The organiser was trying to arrange a chartered flight for people in the same situation as Kate. A willing airline was found but the flight did not come to fruition after the Australian Government would not accept the flight into Australia. 

With that option gone, and with the pre-Christmas caps making it impossible to find a flight, they looked to early 2021.

DFAT flights are available, although with just one flight per month they book out within 10-15 minutes of being released and give you around three weeks’ notice. They are more expensive than the flights Kate has booked, fly to Darwin where the quarantine at Howard Springs is much more expensive, and have no entertainment or food on the flight. 

Two months ago, they went ahead and booked commercial flight tickets for September 2. The flights set them back $5,500 which in an ordinary world, would be expensive for one-way tickets, but they were the cheapest they have seen them in the last 12 months. Added to that cost is the expense of shipping their belongings home and the cost of hotel quarantine on return.

“I was at the end of my tether, so we booked our flights for the start of September, mostly based on price and location. We found flights that weren’t going to cost us an absolute fortune, flying into Adelaide where the quarantine facilities for families are a little bit better.”

“I’d like to say I was elated, but the reality is, with everything that’s been going on, even after we had booked them, I still wasn’t necessarily sure that we would end up on a flight. You try not to get your hopes up because in this whole thing there is no guarantee.”

Kate has been following several ‘stranded Australians’ groups on Facebook and was pleased to see it has been a relatively ‘stable’ time for getting home. Most people who have booked with Singapore Airlines through a flight agent seem to be getting home. Singapore Airlines, says Kate, book to caps, which means there is little chance of being bumped from your flight due to overbooking.

It seemed the tide had turned, and last week the couple gave notice on their jobs and their rental. For a few short days, there seemed to be some hope and certainty. That was until the Australian Government announced on July 2 that they were halving caps in an attempt to reduce pressure on quarantine systems. Under the new caps, Australia will accept only 3,000 people per month. When the flight caps are reviewed at National Cabinet in August, Kate is hoping that the previous caps will be reinstated, which she feels will make their trip home a certainty, although the Prime Minister has indicated it is likely the reduced caps will remain until the end of the year. 

Essentially, if the Slaters are bumped from their flight, they will not have jobs or a home to live in. 

“It has come as an even bigger shock now. When you literally think you have done everything right, and you’ve planned this and you finally think you’re going to get on that plane,” Kate’s voice drifts off as she breaks down.  

“I don’t know what we will do.” If the flight is cancelled, it means starting the process over again, a scenario that isn’t ideal given that the cost of flights has jumped considerably since the caps were reduced.

Sleepless nights are followed by the constant checking of the news and emails. Stress levels are high. “Because the consequences of not getting on that flight are so enormous, I think it’s quite challenging not to think about it,” said Kate.

“Just let us come home. I just want to see my family. I just want to give my mum and dad a hug.

“Most new parents would say that having a baby brings massive change in your life anyway. For me, it’s been the toughest 18 months of my life. Since last Friday, it’s certainly taking its toll on both of us.

“With Bea being the age that she is,” Kate continues, “there are so many milestones that you like to share with your family, and it just feels like time we’re never going to get back.”

Andrew adds, “The approach to effectively banning your own citizens from returning, I was quite surprised by, wasn’t the Australia that I knew, and certainly not the one that Kate knew. That was one of the most shocking things that I’ve encountered.”

Andrew goes on to say that the whole situation is disappointing. “The further this period of uncertainty continues, the further the strain on every aspect of our life, the strain on our marriage, the strain on Kate’s health, on my health, this is not living – what they are proposing we endure. You just view it month by month, week by week, day by day. For us to have to endure this for no real reason, it doesn’t make you feel particularly valued. Better days will come – that’s what you’ve got to keep telling yourself.”

Kate’s mum, Sue, said there was a lot of excitement with the announcement of their first grandchild and they were looking forward to playing a part in Beatrix’s life. On top of sharing the frustration, one of the things Sue hears a lot is people questioning why ‘these people’ who are stuck overseas couldn’t just come home earlier. “It’s quite upsetting when they were told not to at the start, and now they can’t get here. They’re not just faceless people. It’s quite emotional,” she said.

The Slater family is in limbo. Having paid for flights, given notice for their jobs and rental, they do not know if they will be flying home in September or whether they will end up jobless and homeless in London. Their future is in the hands of the Australian Government.

This article appeared in The Koondrook and Barham Bridge Newspaper, 15 July 2021.