Moving from the US to Australia During the Pandemic

"Do you want to hear some good news?” Brent asked as he handed me a cup of coffee this morning.

”Yes…” I said, wondering what the news could possibly be.

“Australia reported zero new covid cases today.” Brent told me.

I was sitting on a chair at our house in Salt Lake City, where we had a record-high week of covid cases. On Friday alone, Utah reported 2,292 cases. The US reported nearly 100,000. IN. A. DAY.

“We should move there!” I exclaimed. We smiled a bittersweet smile at each other, because after months of preparing, we were actually 23 days away from moving to Australia. Just 23 more days of trying to avoid getting covid in a state and a country that failed its citizens during a global pandemic. Just three more weeks until we move to a country that put public health before politics.

Generally speaking, being a multinational family has more challenges than perks (immigration hurdles, expensive flights, and being on the opposite side of the world as half our family, to name a few). But in the case of covid-19, we are fortunate to be an Australian-American family and have the opportunity to move from one country to another. This is the story of how Brent and I have spent the past seven months working to make a temporary move from our home in Salt Lake City, Utah, US to Brent’s hometown of Canberra, Australia. I hope it can be helpful to families who are in a similar situation.

Remember December 2019? Remember when we were all making plans for 2020, before most of us had heard of covid-19? In December 2019, Brent and I bought plane tickets for our family of three to go to Australia for the month of May 2020.

My partner, Brent, is Australian. We met in Sydney on Tinder while I was vacationing in Australia in 2014 and later that year he moved to the US and we got married and made our home in Salt Lake City, Utah. We managed to travel back to Australia about once a year to visit his family. We went in 2015 when I was pregnant with our kid, Zoomer; then again in 2016 when Zoomer was nine-months-old; then Brent braved the trip back alone with 18-month-old Zoomer in 2017 because I had a conference to attend in Atlanta (remember conferences? With like… thousands of people and breakfast buffets?!). The last time we visited was right after Zoomer’s third birthday in April, 2019. Every single time we packed up our suitcases and headed back to Utah, Brent and I talked about how we wished we could spend more than two weeks a year with our family and friends in Australia.

I am American and gave birth to Zoomer in Utah, so Z was automatically a US citizen. I wish we would have filed for Zoomer’s Australian citizenship by descent the year they were born, but we were busy, tired, working parents and we didn’t get around to it until Zoomer was three-and-a-half. Sue me! Getting Zoomer Australian citizenship was relatively easy, but was time consuming and required gathering a lot of paperwork (marriage certificates, birth certificates, passports, application forms, photos of Zoomer signed by healthcare providers stating that “Yes, this cute kid IS Zoomer.” We finally submitted everything and Zoomer’s Australian citizenship by descent was approved late September 2019.

Once Z was an Australian citizen, we had to get them an Australian passport. I didn’t know this, but dual citizens must use the passport of the country they are entering as a citizen, so Z will have to use an Australian passport to enter Australia and an American passport to enter the United States. We needed to get Z’s passport before we flew to Australia in May. In February 2020, Brent and Zoomer flew from Salt Lake City to San Francisco for a quick day-trip to apply for Zoomer’s passport at the Australian Embassy. (Turns out, only the parent needs to go to the embassy, but we didn’t know that, so Zoomer had a very fun, but unnecessary trip. Like what did we think they were going to do? Have a three-year-old take an oath in person or something?). We had been following the news about the coronavirus in Wuhan closely. Little did we know, the virus was already in the Bay Area.

Fortunately, the quick trip was a success, Brent and Z were healthy, and we got Zoomer’s passport in the mail not long after. We were making preparations for our month-of-May in Australia, like getting our house ready to be a vacation rental and tying up loose ends at work and simultaneously listening to the covid-19 news on The Daily and like most people on the planet asking ourselves, “Is this coronavirus… serious?”

We booked our flights on United Airlines (which has proved to be a blessing because as airlines have cancelled flights, United’s nightly flight from San Francisco to Sydney hasn’t seemed to stop throughout the entire pandemic). Our flight from San Francisco to Sydney was scheduled to leave on April 29th. By early March, Brent and I knew the coronavirus was, in fact, very serious, and it felt unlikely that we would be going anywhere in May, let alone Australia. On March 20, Australia closed its borders to all non-residents, and the decision to indefinitely postpone our trip was made for us when the mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine was implemented on March 28th. It didn’t make sense (nor would we be allowed) to quarantine for 14 days in a hotel, to only have two weeks with our family after and no idea if we could even return to Utah. This pandemic was happening everywhere and Brent and I felt like the best decision would be to stay in Salt Lake City until we knew more about the virus and the long-term implications. Brent called United Airlines and cancelled our flight. United was accommodating and instead of a refund, we asked for a credit, so that we could re-book our flight once we figured out what the hell to do.

As Australia was effectively managing the pandemic, covid-19 spiraled out of control in the United States. It became obvious that the Federal and Utah governments were not going to mandate evidence-based recommendations for slowing the spread of covid-19, so Brent and I started discussing the possibility of moving to Australia. There were some long, emotional conversations and lots of cost/benefit-lists drafted to decide if it was better to stay in Utah or better to move to Canberra. How will we make money in Australia? How will we balance work in Utah if Zoomer’s preschool closes? Where will we be safest? It was impossible to know if we were over-reacting, under-reacting, or in a Goldie Locks sweet spot of making the perfect decision for our family. We decided we should try to get to Australia.

As Australian citizens, Brent and Zoomer could have booked a flight to Sydney and been on it the next day. It was me, the American barnacle, making things more complicated. Here’s what had to happen for us to be allowed into Australia as a family…

I explored the Australian travel visa options and decided to apply for a visitor visa (subclass 600). I asked to be approved for up to a 12-month stay. Because Brent is a permanent resident of the United States, he can’t be out of the US for longer than a year without having to apply for re-entry (which wasn’t a risk we were willing to take under a potential Trump administration). After I completed the visa application, I submitted a covid-19 travel exemption application. I am under the impression that immediate family members of Australian citizens do not have to apply for a travel exemption anymore, but still need a visa that has been approved for arrival during the pandemic. I’m sharing my experience, not official advice, so if in doubt, contact the Australian Government.

I applied for my visa on May 27th and waited and waited and waited, because the Australian Immigration website said, Don’t book flights until you have an approved visa, and also said, Don’t apply for travel restriction exemption until you are within three months of wanting to arrive in Australia. We would have tried to get my visa and book flights for as soon as possible, but we had a couple big things to consider in determining the date we would try to get to Australia. I had a book coming out on September 8th and I needed to be available for publicity for at least 4-8 weeks after the launch which would be torturous to do in a hotel room with my wild four-year-old. We also needed to get our house ready to become a vacation rental for while we were away. We decided on leaving November 23, 2020.

When I applied for my visa, I was told the processing time could be 45-70 days. By late July, we were watching flights get more expensive so on August 2nd, I thought, “Screw it! We’re close enough to November, and that 3-month arrival window,” so I finally applied for the travel exemption and got approved the next day!

Brent called United on August 11th and booked our November 23rd flights. It’s cheaper to book round-trip flights than one-way, so we wanted to have return tickets, too. We knew the latest we could return to the US is mid-November 2021 (because I can’t be in Australia, and Brent can’t be out of the US, for longer than 12 months) but we wanted to book flights for the earliest we would want to come home, knowing we could change our return flights if we wanted to. We are going to enroll Zoomer in kindergarten in Canberra (where they will learn to spell enroll enrol like an Australian). I just looked at the academic calendar and saw that there is a term break in April, so we booked return flights for then. I personally feel like it’s unlikely that we’ll come back in April (presidential election, covid vaccine, and my ability to earn money pending) and am thinking July or October seems more realistic. If the Courtney-Myers family is thriving in Canberra, we’ll stay in Australia as long as we can.

So now we’re 23 days from November 23rd which feels excitingly close and too far away at the same time, as our Utah hospitals are overwhelmed, our friends are getting sick, and the virus feels like its creeping in closer every day. We’re packing our house up, filling suitcases, and trying to prepare ourselves for the 24 hours of travel and the two-week hotel quarantine with a high-energy preschooler. I feel a sense of guilt, that we get to leave the US and live in Australia. But if the tables were turned and my friends could flee the US for a safer place, I’d offer to help them pack (outdoors, 6-feet apart, and with a mask on).

Love,

Kyl xo
(they/she)

Let me know if you have any questions or more up-to-date info in the comments!

[Photo credit of kangaroo jumping at dusk on Mount Painter in Canberra, Australia: Brent Courtney]