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Border Between New South Wales And Victoria Has Officially Reopened

Border Between New South Wales And Victoria Has Officially Reopened

At 12:01am, police blared their sirens, DJs played music and drivers beeped their horns as they were finally able to cross.

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie

The border between New South Wales and Victoria has finally been reopened.

The move will allow loads of people on either side see loved ones, friends and also explore the sights and sounds of their neighbour's state.

It officially kicked in at 12:01 this morning (November 23) and has been a long time in the making.

The border was closed as Victoria began experiencing a second wave of coronavirus infections and, like every other state and territory in the country, NSW shut its borders to ensure a similar situation didn't erupt.

There were border restrictions for 137 days as Victoria tried everything in the book to bring cases down to a minimum.

Victoria has since had more than three weeks of no new locally transmitted cases and NSW has gone more than two weeks without the same.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian acknowledged the hard border closure has been hard on many.

"We never want to see this ever again," she said. "This is the last time in our lifetime this border is closed and we know tomorrow morning after midnight it will be a whole new era for both of our states.

"I'm just pleased that life will get back to normal tomorrow and I want to thank the community for your patience, your resilience and also for being a great example to the rest of New South Wales," she said.

When the border was officially opened, they sure as hell made a party out of it.

At the Albury-Wodonga crossing, police blared their sirens, DJs pumped music and drivers beeped their horns as people were finally able to move across state lines. It was almost like a mini-New Year's Eve celebration.

Melbourne resident Fiona Snape was in line waiting to pick up her teenage daughter from Canberra and told the ABC: "I haven't seen her since the beginning of July so that will be great to see her again and I'll pick her up and take her back to Melbourne for the holidays.

"We're all looking forward to a nice reunion."

The operation to keep the border crossings locked down hasn't been an easy one. It's required roughly 600 police officers and 500 Australian Defence Force personnel at any give time to ensure people weren't doing the wrong thing since July 8.

Featured Image Credit: NSW Police

Topics: News, Australia