CAROLYN Wright had seen all 11 of her grandchildren on the day each of them were born up until grandchild number 12 came along.
Little Pippa Simpson, now 12 weeks old, was born during the most recent NSW COVID-19 lockdown and while the Queensland border was firmly shut.
Mrs Wright, a former Newcastle resident now living in Townsville, would have come down "the month before" the birth to help out her daughter Emma-Leigh Simpson had it not been for the travel restrictions.
And for Mrs Simpson, of Warners Bay, the arrival of Pippa - her third child - was a "hard" experience without the presence of her mum.
So when the three generations were united at Newcastle Airport on Monday when Mrs Wright and her husband, Stephen, arrived from north of the border, it made for both an emotional and joyous meeting.
"We just ran to her, I dropped everything and just ran," Mrs Wright said. "So did [Stephen], he was ahead of me." Mrs Simpson said: "I didn't realise how emotional I was going to be."
"It was definitely hard not having the support and prep that I would normally have [with the birth]," she said.
"I was home schooling my other two kids, it was tough."
Mrs Wright added: "If I could have been there, I could have been so much help to her."
The family's story was one that stood out among similar others in the airport's arrivals hall on Monday.
The first flight in from Queensland for the day - out of Brisbane - was near capacity after the state's border restrictions eased at 1am Monday. For the past five months, while some flights have ran - they've mostly only had a handful of essential workers on them.
The return of full flights, and resumption of additional routes like Cairns and the Sunshine Coast, is a relief for Newcastle Airport management after a disrupted year.
"We've been running without any revenue, basically, for months," Newcastle Airport CEO Dr Peter Cock said. "So having this big flow of people is great."
Dr Cock said he hoped travel restrictions would become a thing of the past and the airport could begin to focus on its "ambitious goals".
"You plan for the worst and hope for the best, but what COVID has shown is you can never quite make a prediction," he said.
"It's important to take advantage of what's happening now, and the rise in traffic, but if worse comes to worst and there is more shutdowns, we can cope with that as well.
"We've got some very clear goals. We want to restart Auckland, and also Singapore. That's a longer play but Hobart or Launceston is a shorter term goal."
