A Complicated Departure

Leaving Australia was a long and difficult process. Because of how this contagion has changed and continues to change our way of life, many things have become either more complicated or nearly impossible. Travel is one facet of our life that has been affected greatly by all that has transpired since the outbreak of 2019.

In the not so distant past, all one had to do for a bit of globe-trotting, was look at a map to decide on a destination, check for flights and accommodation on-line, pay for the flights (usually with a credit card), pack one’s suitcases (for us, this was usually done the day before the departure date), drive to the airport and board a plane. That was the long and short of it. These days, the checklist of requirements is rather long, and it keeps changing, all – the – time.

(Finally taking off, Master Z settles in for some in-flight entertainment)

Before we could even look at possible dates to fly out of the great country of Oz, we had to get an exemption to leave. This travel exemption is not a requirement for all travellers. It is a requirement for those who opted out of a particular government sanctioned clinical trials for a certain gene therapy drug that had been rolled out en masse (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, feel free to send me an email). The only exemption category that made it possible for us to get approval to leave the country was the category for travel for three months or longer. For this exemption, we had to provide statutory declarations stating that we intended to leave the country and not return for three months or longer, and submit compelling evidence that we could support ourselves while overseas and that we would be allowed to stay in the country we were travelling to. For our situation, evidence we submitted included: my birth certificate, my expired Philippine passport, marriage certificate, bank account details, proof of future employment or business prospects and a rental lease contract with a duration longer than three months. We lodged our application for exemption before bedtime one night in early December and got the approval to leave less than ten hours later. This exemption was valid for three months.

Once the Australian government gave us the green light to leave, we booked our flights from Karratha to Manila via Singapore. This took several hours as we considered possible dates. The flight schedules back in December, when we were organising our departure, were few and far between and not to mention, very expensive. Flights for our family of two adults and two children with Singapore Airlines cost just over AUD$5000 (about USD$3500). They were one way tickets. My parents, who were also leaving Australia for the Philippines as they transition to retire, were generous enough to shoulder the cost of the children’s plane fares and we accepted their offer gratefully.

(Longest check-in process we've ever experienced! The look on his little face.)

The next thing we had to organise was the quarantine hotel. At the time of planning, the Philippine government required arriving Filipinos and Balikbayans (former Filipinos who were naturalised in another country), who wished not to participate in the aforementioned global clinical trials for a certain gene therapy drug, were required to quarantine at an approved hotel for seven days. A Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) test would then be conducted on the seventh day and with a negative result, the next seven days are completed at home. We booked a two-bedroom serviced apartment at Ascott Makati for eight nights instead of the prescribed seven just to be safe.

A few days before our departure, the Philippine government changed their isolation requirement to only five days of hotel quarantine. We were unable to get a refund for our extra nights but that was all right as we were actually looking forward to a mini vacation at that lovely apartment on the twenty-third floor with amazing views and incredible food at our fingertips (thanks to food delivery services and the excellent restaurants available to us because of our central location).

After that, we had to book our pre-departure RT-PCR tests required to transit through Singapore and to enter the Philippines. Because we lived in Karratha, which is 1522.6 kilometres away from Perth, there was no available laboratory conducting these tests locally. We had to book our tests in Perth and re-book our flights accordingly so that the date samples were taken was within 48 hours of our departure date, a travel requirement for most airlines and destination countries at the time of booking.

(Here's a shot of our last meal at the airport hotel on our last night in Perth, Australia.)

Our departure date was the 1st of February, 2022. We were at Perth International Airport three hours prior to our scheduled departure time of 6:40 A.M. We spent the day before our flight in a two-bedroom airport hotel, anxiously awaiting the results of our tests. There were digital health passes (One Health Pass, Philippine requirement) to apply for, suitcases to be repacked and re-weighed, and nerves to be settled – mine, mostly. We put the children to bed early and roused them without issues just before three in the morning.

(There were more empty seats than passengers.)

Check-in took about an hour as the airline staff, checked and re-checked all the necessary paperwork for departing Australia as well as documentation required upon our arrival in Manila. The airport was very quiet. There were no restaurants open and very few travellers walking around. To me, it felt eerie, like a scene from a dystopian movie set in the not-so-distant future, one I did not care for.

As our almost empty plane took off, I wondered if I would ever see Perth airport again.

It was a complicated trip and the most difficult to plan compared to all the other trips we’ve ever taken in the past. But through it all, we had a sense of hopefulness beneath the surface of elevated stress levels and uncertainty. We were all very excited to board that plane, with the other dozen passengers flying out with us, to a new reality, to a new existence. We were ready! There was also an overall God-given assurance that everything was going to be all right.

And it was.

(We were excited and full of anticipation as the plane took off.)