Quarantine and Australia Bushfires

While most of the world shut down for Covid, Australia Bushfires didn’t.  One of our helicopters transitions from Indonesia fighting fires during the summer months to Australia for the winter season (summer season for the southern hemisphere) to assist with bushfires.  Our base in Australia is out of Maindample, VIC and we have been going over for years.  It works out perfectly as our USA season ends around Oct/Nov and Australia is just about to start…so with a few weeks off to reset, we head over around the end of November and go until about March.  Australia has almost become a second home for Aaron and I…we absolutely love it there! The people are incredible, the landscape is dreamy, and the critters are abundant.  

Due to Covid, travel for everyone basically stopped.  Fortunately for us, the jobs kept coming in, but it became almost impossible for us to go anywhere and get the jobs done. When we go to Australia, work visa’s are always required and normally are very easy for us to obtain and once submitted it usually takes no more than a week to receive.  As with everything during Covid, these became nearly impossible to get and if it wasn’t for some pretty influential folks, I don’t think we would have been able to get them to fulfill our obligations over there.  

Normally crew changes are not a big deal, but due to the fact that ticket prices were astronomical and everyone coming in had to quarantine for 2 weeks, we basically were left with a small handful of employees that either had to do 2 months on or do a stay-on-stay-on schedule for the entire duration…something Aaron and I are both unfortunately used to.

Now for the fun part…14 DAY QUARANTINE! All incoming flights to Victoria, Australia had to enter Sydney for the 14 day quarantine period.  There were many hotels that were only used for quarantine purposes and you never knew which one you would end up in.  We got super lucky and were right downtown Sydney with a view of the harbour. Honestly, I thought we hit the jackpot.  We came with another crew member, and he was down the hall a few doors down but on the opposite side with a view of the street (this becomes crucial info later 🙂 

I will admit, getting off the airplane in Sydney, being transferred through the airport like prisoners, having to take an immediate covid test upon arrival, waiting in lines for hours, continuing to be led to unknown places, put on buses, transferred to an unknown destination…it really made me realize I can’t do prison!  Once we arrived to the hotel, we were all put in separate lines, had to give lots of personal information incase we were taken to the hospital, pay in advance for the hotel stay, and then go over all the rules and regulations. Once again….prison info!  We were then led to our rooms where once the door was shut, you could only open it up 3 times a day for meals…and you must wait 10 seconds after the knock on the door so the person didn’t come into any contact with you….you guessed it…prison. 

Once we got settled in and checked out the view, we thought..this is a cakewalk.  We had more paperwork once we got inside, we realized we could order food from door dash if we didn’t like what we got for food from the hotel, we also could order one bottle of wine a day, but they did daily checks to make sure you weren’t drinking in excess and they also had mental health checks everyday as well.  We thought this was odd…but then realized after a few days how your mind can really take over!  One of our friends that had just got out of quarantine explained it the best.  He said days 1-4 you are just getting used to the new environment, getting great sleep as you always have so much work to do at home or on the job, binge watching tv and eating junk food.  Days 5-9 your mind takes over, you can’t open a window to get fresh air, you start panicking that you can’t live like this, you have watched every possible channel on the t.v., you have taken 4 showers and 2 baths in a day just to kill time, you hand wash your clothes to kill time, you start a new fitness routine only to realize how out of shape you are, and you start thinking about how to escape.  Then days 10-14 roll around and you have anxiety of going back out into the real world again, how you have enjoyed your quite time, maybe this isn’t so bad, you don’t really have responsibilities in life lol, maybe this is what you are meant to do for the rest of your life!  ROLLERCOASTER OF EMOTIONS!  

That’s pretty much every thought Aaron and I had.  Aaron brought along a adult coloring book and I mocked him for packing it, yet I became the sole colorer.  I started a website for our company.  We went through years of emails, text messages, and stored cache on our computers.  We organized music on our iTunes.  We became super efficient at guessing the next letter of the sky writer airplane in the sky.  We had a fun game once we ordered door dash with our coworker on the opposite side…once we would order the food, we would all take guesses at what the person looked like and what kind of bicycle they would be on (this is why his location at the hotel was so important in the end lol).  We figured out when the doorbell of the elevator would go off, that meant our food was coming down the hall!  You know, all the important things.  By the end of it, we obviously couldn’t wait to walk more than 10 steps in one direction, feel the importance of wind in your hair and breathe fresh air! We also realized how lucky we all were to get to experience this and how precious each day really is.  

Once we got out, we made the drive to Maindample to get busy getting the helicopter ready for bushfires where we would spend all winter and early spring hopping around to different places in VIC (Victoria, Australia) and have a busy season. You know…same old same old…put water where the water needs to go lol!  Enjoy the pictures….