The owners of the landmark Maree Hotel continue to find themselves trapped in New South Wales, with border closures and bureaucracy preventing their return and threatening the business.
Publican of the Maree Hotel, Phil Turner and wife Marilyn left the town in South Australia in June, planning to collect a 34-person tour they were due to bring back via an outback adventure.
The advent of the Sydney COVID outbreak prompted them to cancel the tour and turn the caravan around, heading back to the SA border. But the spread of cases to regional NSW closed the borders, with the Turners on the wrong side.
The couple applied for cross-border exemptions on 3 August, and are still waiting for a decision.
The Maree Hotel was established in 1883 as the Great Northern Hotel, at the junction of the legendary Oodnadatta and Birdsville Tracks.
It gained notoriety as an outback oasis, as seen in a review from a traveller published in 1885 in the South Australian Advertiser, who described it as “palatial in appearance”.
“I was fairly startled when I caught the first glimpse of the Great Northern, which does not belie its name. Like monuments in a desert it rears its lofty head high above other buildings, and can be seen by travellers a mile away from the dreary plain.”
The extended absence is causing licensing problems for the pub, as the managers holding down the fort while the Taylors are gone are due to have their first baby and already overdue to travel to Port Augusta in preparation for the birth, making them “extremely stressed” says Phil.
Pressures around operations have already taken one staff member to a nervous breakdown, and the chef has left.
Making things even harder, the pub is booked out hosting emergency workers and SA Police monitoring the Birdsville Track.
Phil and Marilyn are both fully vaccinated and say they are happy to quarantine or be re-tested, and cannot understand why the border exemption would remain unanswered or might be declined.
They wait to hear from SA Health, which is using an online portal and says it is “streamlining” applications, notifying people to resubmit.
“I’d walk over hot coals if that’s what we had to do,” Phil told the ABC.
