A sign welcomes international arrivals at Auckland Airport. Many of us are suffering from a retreat that has been denied international holidays for a year. Photo: Getty Images
On Monday evening, the 328-meter-high Auckland Sky Tower, which could be seen from all parts of this sailing-addicted port city, which is now almost the permanent home of the Auld mug, shimmered slightly sickly green and gold.
It paid homage to the return of Australians to New Zealand – human cash flow in a tourism-dependent nation – after more than a year of absence. It was a characteristically friendly kiwi thought (although you should try to reciprocate this at night with the New Zealand national colors on top of an Australian tower).
The Kiwis are a friendly people, aside from the occasional bilateral diplomatic tensions between Tasmania and the more frequent, sometimes vicious international sporting rivalries.
On television in Australia, Kiwi Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who shone as brightly as the Sky Tower did in normal times, did her best to join the New Zealand brand. That is despite their “flyer caution” warning to Bubble attendees earlier this month.
But if there was an Aussie invasion in New Zealand this week, I didn’t notice. As expected, most of the visitors from Australia in the first week of the Trans Tasman Bubble appear to have been Kiwi expats reuniting with friends and relatives.
Even for die-hard scribes who report the start of the world’s first major quarantine-free travel bridge in the pandemic, the tearful emotional scenes in which passengers poured into the arrivals hall to be greeted by long-lost loved ones are not so easily forgotten.
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It was a reminder, as we continue to struggle with closed borders, that the best trip is ultimately always about human connections, not just about indulgent vacations. In a way, it was Auckland this week for me too.
I decided to stay three nights after taking the first full bladder flight out of Australia early Monday morning to take advantage of this opportunity to experience the sheer novelty of overseas travel after the pandemic-triggered hiatus.
For sure. It was just New Zealand, our home away from home, not New York. But as always when visiting this country, where a buddy is a brother, corner shops are dairies and belts of Jandals, New Zealand feels at the same time as familiar as ever and as strangely alien as ever.
As I wandered around town – one of the most COVID-safe in the world, despite the fear of airline cleaning on the first full day of the bladder – I felt, if not like New Zealand’s rarest bird, the tern, then at least a bit like one Kakapo, another elusive species of kiwi bird.
From hoteliers to waiters and salespeople to taxi drivers, everywhere I went, I’ve been the first Australian Aucklanders have met in more than a year or more (sorry, it had to be me, Cuzzies and not Chris Hemsworth).
For a few seconds, I felt like the gross but impressive Sky Tower lighting display was being staged just for me. Until the middle of the week, I was the only Australian staying in my hotel. That is about to change as Kiwi hotels are reporting solid bookings for the upcoming winter ski season, and that may not come soon enough for many. My taxi driver who is taking me to the airport for my flight home tells me this is his first trip to Auckland International Airport in a year and eight days.
Many of us are suffering from a retreat that has been denied international holidays for a year. In a prosperous, if unjustified, developed nation richer than New Zealand, travel had become a right, not a privilege.
In my lower-middle-class household growing up, the idea of an overseas vacation was never voiced. The only “overseas” destination my father visited was Tasmania in his youth.
This week, as short as it may have been, my first trip abroad in more than a year certainly felt more like a privilege, and any trip abroad after what we’ve been through will remain so for me.
For a while, at least, New Zealand will be as overseas as Australians can get. That’s OK for me. And if the bubble proves to be a real success, it can’t help but build trust in our nervous leaders to create more travel bridges with other high-performing COVID-19 nations.
In all honesty, I can’t wait to see Singapore’s famous fountain-like white Merlion splash green and gold water from its mouth one day soon (then maybe not)
Anthony Dennis is the editor of Traveler in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He traveled to Auckland with the courtesy of Jetstar.
See also: Travel Tips from Jacinda Ardern: Treat New Zealand like any other Australian state
See also: New flights, new rules: on board the first NZ Travel Bubble flight
