No, Australia isn’t open for tourists yet

As i’ve mentioned before, our family has been separated by the Australian border closure. yesterday’s “big” announcement was, like so many other Australian government communications, intentionally vague about just exactly who would be allowed in. 

The particulars aren’t interesting but, long story short, Americans (and other tourists) will NOT be permitted to enter in November. Only Australian residents and citizens who are abroad can, and they won’t have to do the arduous hotel quarantine that’s been the rule since march of 2020.

The change to a no-quarantine return is newsworthy because Australia has indirectly locked 50,000 of its own citizens out of returning home by forcing airlines to cap the number of passengers per flight to match the number of slots available in their hotel quarantine program. In practice this means there are only 40-ish people per flight, and, unless you paid $13,000 for business class, you aren’t getting home. This change should allow them to clear that backlog. 

We’ve been through enough of these ambiguous and often-rescinded announcements that we didn’t bother to get our hopes up, but we are hoping that this means the date for international visitors to return to Australia is sooner rather than later.