A school in western Victoria has organised a bus to return its South Australian students home in a last-minute dash to the border this afternoon.
From just after midnight tonight, South Australians will no longer be allowed return home from Victoria unless they are essential travellers — boarding school students do not qualify.
About 20 students from SA's south-east South attend Hamilton-Alexandra College, located in Hamilton, in western Victoria.
Principal Andrew Hirst said parents had to choose between rushing their children home or not seeing them until border restrictions relaxed.
"[Families] are currently making the difficult decision between leaving their child in Victoria, possibly until Christmas, or bringing them home and returning back to more isolation and the possibility of remote learning," he said.
"We're recommending that families take their children back and just watch and respond over the next two weeks, and just sit back and monitor developments.
"Because … there's no issue in the boarders returning back to Hamilton, but there is [an issue], obviously, getting back across the South Australian border."
Dr Hirst said the school had arranged for "a bus and trailers and horse floats" to return the SA boarders home.
Unsettled by uncertainty
Danielle England will be waiting at the border this afternoon to receive her daughter, Georgina England, and take her home to the family farm at Keilira for mandatory quarantine.
Mrs England said it had been a very intense couple of days for boarding school parents.
"It is a really hard decision and we don't know what the world looks like," she said.
"We're making decisions on the fly.
"We don't know if Georgina will be home for a week, two weeks or six months.
"We had initially thought … stay at school, you're really happy over there.
"But when we spoke with her, she was very adamant that she wanted to come home — and I think the thought of not knowing when next you will come home was really unsettling."
School hopes for change
The school is hopeful some exemptions will be sorted out to allow South Australian students to return home after the tougher restrictions are imposed.
Dr Hirst said the school had been supported by the Federal Education Minister and local member, Dan Tehan.
"He's been in touch with John Gardner, the Education Minister in South Australia, also with South Australia Health, and we're making some leeway now into an understanding that there may be exemptions given for the children to return home in the September-October holidays," Dr Hirst said.
"They need to sit their VCE examinations, and that will be very difficult to do in South Australia."
