CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Families embraced in Brisbane airport yesterday as travellers from Victoria and Greater Sydney disembarked planes and reunited with loved ones.
Like that famous scene out of ‘Love, Actually’ – there were tears and hugs and laughter as Queenslanders celebrated the opening of borders after 250 days of being locked out.
Expats, some who agree with the QLD Premier, many who don’t – were finally able to waltz on into their home state without paying the exorbitant mental and financial costs of two weeks in a Gold Coast quarantine hotel.
While the scenes in the airport looked like a British rom-com that should’ve been accompanied with the iconic ‘Love is All Around’ by The Troggs, it seems things have been very different at the rural border crossings.
Pubs from Gundy to Killarney have today reported critical shortages of sugarcane champagne and mid-strength lager, as the regionally-based expats roar across the border at Jennings and Tenterfield.
Publicans insist they were as prepared as the could be for the onslaught, after seeing the growing crowd of dispossessed Queenslanders growing on the NSW side of the border for the last few months.
However, no one could have prepared for the amount of grog these heathens would plow through.
“It’s fucken fucked, mate” says Warwick publican, Mal Bennett.
“Once they pillaged Stanthorpe and Applethorpe – they moved north to here”
The returning Queenslanders are so thirsty for the biff syrup that it is being reported that some are even cross the border back to Tenterfield and further south to Glen Innes – after months of waiting to take back the Granite Belt.
“We know these are our own people” said Queensland Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk.
“But there is a look of frustrated freedom in their eyes, and they certainly aren’t acting like Queenslanders right now”
“Maybe it’s all the time they spent down south, maybe the desperation to get back has sent them mad…”
“But I won’t stand for the way our border towns are being destroyed right now”
The Premier has since called upon her Special Branch troops to help manage the hysteria taking place across pubs in state’s south-west – ordering them to put rubber bullets in any Expats who can’t follow the rules”
“And if any of the people behaving this way aren’t Queenslanders, I’ve told the troops to use live rounds”
MORE TO COME.
