Aussie Abroad #9 - How I Travelled Through COVID

Travelling alone can be stressful without a pandemic. You’re always on high alert to make sure you have everything you got off the plane with, which leaves you very little time to enjoy the journey. It’s fun, but when you are the sole traveler responsible for everything, it pays to be cautious.

---

COVID-19 and its inevitable pandemic shut down the world. Flights everywhere were cancelled to avoid transmission of the disease, everyone went into months of lockdown, and people became so much more aware of their health and others around them. Fortunately, for people like me, there were till options available to get me home safely. In March of 2020, our university shut down for what we thought would be two weeks because of a positive COVID test. I went home with my teammate, Skylar, thinking we’d be back on campus in no time. Not even a week into that break, I got a call saying I had to book a flight within 48 hours as the Australian borders were closing, and I would not be able to get home at all. My parents, my coach and my teammate’s parents were amazing at organizing me rides to the airport, packing my entire dorm room up (as this was nearing the end of the semester) and getting me on that plane so I could make it home.

Skylar’s mum loaded me up with Clorox wipes, masks, gloves, sanitizer and tissues so that I could do everything I could to avoid catching COVID on my flight home. I was incredibly cautious about changing my gloves every couple of hours, wiping down my seat constantly, applying hand sanitizer when I could, doing everything possible as this was early days of what was portrayed as a deadly disease. When I landed back in Adelaide, I had to fill out government forms so they knew where I was if they did random quarantine checks to houses. I was isolated to my bedroom for the two weeks quarantine as my parents were considered essential workers as this time. COVID was never a problem where I live, so my summer break did not involve masking up, isolating or missing out on anything.

Travelling back to America was so different to how I usually travelled. I had to apply for a travel exemption, and provide information and documents about why I was leaving the country to be able to head back to college. The flights were empty, I had an entire row to myself on both flights I took. Airports were not as busy as they used to be, because flights were still shut down. I had to get used to wearing a mask because this was my new normal from here on out. You could no longer sit in any seat you wanted at your gate, you had to sit in designated seat to ensure social distancing.

---

It felt really eerie travelling in the pandemic because it just felt like a ghost town. Everyone was taking precautions and never getting too close to each other and a lot of things were still closed in the airport which made it very quiet. Thankfully, borders and flights are starting back up again as countries are becoming vaccinated and getting their cases under control. Hopefully within the next couple of years everything will be back to normal and we can all travel normally again!