This time last year, Molly Costin was fleeing NSW to Victoria because of the bushfires.
Now, the 22-year-old Victorian is racing to get home because of a pandemic.
The student nurse packed up her gear from a camping ground in Eden and started driving within two hours of hearing the announcement that the border between NSW and Victoria would close.
Victorians have been told they have until 11:59pm on 1 January, 2021 to get home before a .
Molly Costin and friend driving back from Eden on New Year's Eve, 2020. Source: Supplied
There were reports of long delays at border crossings last night as holidaymakers rushed to get home.
Victoria's Department of Transport warned that the long delays are expected to last.
"Border queues are expected with possible long delays. People crossing the border should allow extra time for their travel, make sure they have water and their ."
Ms Costin spent three hours in a traffic jam while crossing the border at the Victorian town of Genoa on Thursday night.
"I was quite stressed just to actually get over the border in general because… there's a bit of lack of communication towards the public regarding the rules and when they announced the regulations yesterday afternoon," she told SBS News.
Ms Costin fled the bushfires from Eden last year and lost all her camping gear in the fire.
"It was actually the second of January last year when we had to leave; and it's the first of January this year that we've had to leave. So I think we've got a bit of a curse going," she said.
Like many healthcare workers working in a COVID-19 ward, Ms Costin said she felt burnt out and was hoping for a break from the pandemic gloom at the town of Eden on the New South Wales South Coast.
She now has to take yet another COVID-19 test as part of the rules for returning home.
"This will be my seventh COVID test and I've had to isolate twice (already)."
The queues at Genoa that Molly had to wait before on New Year's Eve 2020, trying to flee before the border closed. Source: Supplied
Ms Costin says having worked in a COVID ward she understands the urgency of acting quick with measures to restrict the spread of the virus.
But she says authorities need to consider the practicalities on the ground before imposing such border closures at short-notice.
"In theory, it's a great idea to lock the borders down. I'm all for it because I see it from the other side," Ms Costin said.
"But you also need to think we had thousands of people in that area [South Coast] of New South Wales and they can't all fit through like, one lane of bridge in Genoa in Victoria," she said.
'Didn't have time'
Daniel Coutts Smith is relocating from Cessnock to Victoria with his partner and spent the whole night packing all his possessions in the house in his truck in order to meet the deadline.
Stopping briefly on his 1200 km journey to his new home in Bendigo, Mr Coutts-Smith said he panicked when he heard the border would close.
"We've been a bit unlucky, I guess because it turned out that lockdown happened the exact time when we were actually packing," he said.
"There's actually just so much stuff left in the house. We just took what was really meaningful and important to us because we just didn’t have time to, like, organise all of this stuff."
Daniel and his partner packing up overnight after hearing the Victorian border to NSW would close. Source: Supplied
Mr Coutts-Smith is concerned he will be facing queues at the border when he arrives this evening.
"We're trying to look at the map and see if Google tells us if there's a lot of traffic in one area, maybe you go somewhere else, but we're not sure exactly where we're going to cross the border yet and how that's going to go."
Blow for NSW South Coast tourism
For tourism operators, the mass exodus of Victorian holidaymakers is expected to deal a devastating blow to their local economies.
Chris Nicholls, Tourism Manager Merimbula, says Victorians made up 70 per cent of the tourist population this time of year.
"It has a huge impact on local businesses and particularly the hospitality industry and the hotels and so on," he told SBS News.
"We hoped that this holiday period would be a better one for us, because we are now going through a second period of our peak tourism [period] to find we've lost all our Victorians."
He said it was devastating to see rows of cars and caravans leave the area.
"It was pretty awful yesterday watching caravans and car after car after car. Moving down the highway and saying goodbye to us, very sad."
Lyn Carlson, the manager of the Garden of Eden holiday park, said 98 per cent of visitors were from Victoria.
She said the financial hit to her business would be in the hundreds of thousands as several others cancel their bookings.
“The phone calls keep coming through, everybody wants their money back,” she said.
'Don't rush'
The NRMA is also concerned about driver safety as motorists rush to meet the deadline.
"This is not their fault," NRMA spokesman Peter Khoury told SBS News.
"The public has done nothing wrong. Unfortunately they weren't given much time to get back to the border. They just have to do their best, but be patient, particularly as you get closer to the border and you will inevitably end up joining these long queues."
Mr Khoury is pleading with drivers not to speed.
"Please do anything you wouldn't normally do, particularly trying to get there quickly, and especially if you're coming from long distances."
"It's a very narrow window to get back over the border so what we're now seeing is hours upon hours of delay at the border, which isn't great."
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