Elderly patients and businesspeople in a regional Victorian community are frustrated at remaining cut off from Adelaide, their closest capital city, even as other travel restrictions begin to be lifted.
While South Australian Premier Steven Marshall this week indicated his state's hard border with Victoria could be softened in a fortnight's time, a requirement to self-isolate on arrival in South Australia could scotch hopes of an immediate return to normality for those who commute between Mildura and Adelaide.
A backlog of patients in north-west Victoria awaiting medical treatment has been gradually building in the months since South Australia closed its border earlier this year, with visiting specialists refused exemptions from mandatory quarantine requirements on their return home.
Patients in limbo
"More patients are now suffering because of those policies than [COVID-19] itself, and that's not right," Dr Arthur Karagiannis, an Adelaide eye surgeon who has been treating people in Mildura since 2004, said.
Many patients with glaucoma, diabetes and cataracts have waited weeks or months to see him; some unable to drive in the meantime.
"The reality is even before COVID, [many of these patients] can't travel," Dr Karagiannis said.
"How are they going to get into a car when they can't see? These are 70, 80, 90-year-olds that need specialist ophthalmic and other medical care.
"Your postcode should not determine the access of treatment."
Dr Karagiannis' applications to be exempt from South Australia's mandatory quarantine requirements have been rejected, despite including a COVID-safe plan whereby he would stay on the New South Wales side of the Murray River on trips to Mildura, change gowns between patients, and avoid contact even with other clinical staff during break times.
He said medical specialists would "present no material risk to the people of South Australia if we go [to Mildura]".
"The reason why we've become a lot more upset about the decision is we know that an orthodontist has been granted an exemption but not the rest of us and that is just completely outrageous," Dr Karagiannis said.
"And we can't get a reply as to why one health professional can go to Mildura and not self-isolate, whereas the rest of us have to self-isolate."
A spokeswoman for SA Health said: "Exemptions are considered on a case by case basis and take account of local epidemiology including evidence of community transmission," she said.
"We have granted a number of travel exemptions for health care workers taking into account factors such as clinical urgency, location of work, work undertaken and plans for risk mitigation."
Quarantine 'won't work' for many
It's not only medical patients who feel isolated by South Australia's stance on treating Mildura like the rest of Victoria.
Michael Scheiffers began commuting to Mildura each week from his home in the Adelaide suburb of Aberfoyle Park when he took a job at a motor dealership in the regional centre in July last year.
He hasn't been able to return to South Australia since authorities revoked his essential worker permit just as Victoria's second wave began to take hold mid-year.
"I've got a 12-year-old daughter in Adelaide, so I haven't seen her for basically six months out of 10 this year," Mr Scheiffers said.
"You can almost kick a footy to the border, we can see the border just about, you can go up to it, but we just can't go home."
Mr Scheiffers described the border block as "incredibly frustrating", given Mildura has had just one case during Victoria's second wave.
His partner Claire Aberle decided to join him in Mildura in late August fearing they would otherwise be separated for months.
Staying together away from their Adelaide home has proven costly for the couple, who had to rent a unit in Mildura and buy new whitegoods.
Having now "run out of money", Ms Aberle will return to Adelaide once the hard border is lifted, even if that means completing 14 days in quarantine.
But Mr Scheiffers' day job means he has to wait for a fully open border to join her.
"Fourteen-day quarantine doesn't work for lots of us that work across the border and the more people you talk to, the more people you realise actually do do that," Mr Scheiffers said.
Bus company pulls pin
Mildura's only privately-operated bus link to Adelaide, Tambray Coaches, announced its closure mere days before Mr Marshall's announcement, unable to afford to continue operating amid heavy restrictions.
It was a blow that prompted Mildura's state MP Ali Cupper to declare her region needed better transport links to Melbourne because it could no longer rely on its historic links to South Australia.
More buoyant is Qantas, which is understood to be preparing to launch direct flights between Mildura and Adelaide once restrictions end.
But Tambray Coaches' 34-seater bus can only fit 12 passengers under social distancing rules, and South Australia's requirement for mandatory quarantine when the border does reopen would prevent people making day or weekend trips, at least initially.
"It's not profitable to be able to run unless there is free travel, no restrictions, between Victoria and South Australia," coach operator Tony Prowse said.
"All this sort of stuff is still just not enough to be getting excited about for me, and it's probably too late for me to say I have the reserves to get the business up and running again.
"It's not just reinstating the business; it's being able to have money there to cover the loss of not carrying the full capacity of the vehicle."
