Even if the year 2020 has been full of surprises for the Manoury family, this couple and their three children did not think, just a few weeks ago, that they would spend their New Years Eve on December 24 and 31 locked in a hotel room, without the possibility of leaving.
"It had been 10 months that we had hoped to go to Australia, because my company found me a job in Melbourne, tells us since his compulsory quarantine in Perth, Clément, the father, financial manager of Bordeaux.
But it has been an emotional roller coaster 10 months.
One day I was told:
You are leaving in a month,
then
, Rather in a year and a half ...
"
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Finally, their “life project” with his wife, Camille, and their three children aged 5, 8 and 10, Quentin, Paola and Zoé, came to fruition on November 15th.
His company, Thalès, specializing in aeronautics, managed to find them visas, in order to reach the island-continent, so access is very limited due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Then everything accelerated,” he describes, “we had to make a hasty move, find tenants for our house, enroll the children in school and then find a plane ticket, while he there aren't even every day ”.
"For 14 days, you are nobody going"
The family took off on December 21 from Paris, bound for the city of Perth, in southwest Australia.
"We did not really have the choice of the city, we did according to the flights offered", laughs Clément Manoury.
It is therefore in this coastal city where it is 38 degrees, that the French family landed Tuesday afternoon after a trying trip, to spend 14 days in compulsory quarantine, before joining their new life, in Melbourne, near 3,500 km away.
They can only be released on January 6, after having presented a negative PCR test.
View of the Manoury family bedroom, Perth./DR
"We do not choose the hotel in which we were transferred to a public bus, where everyone had their rank, it was very well established", details the father, who reports that "travelers are very respectful of the instructions" .
“At the airport, they explained to us:
For 14 days, you won't see anyone.
Australia is very strict on this point: "We have been warned that if we get out, we risk a big fine, potentially jail and deportation from the country."
Each hallway of the hotel is also guarded by a guard.
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The Manoury family then discovered their quarantine place, two communicating rooms, for about fifty m2, whose window lets glimpse a small piece of sea. They carried out their first PCR test with an equipped nurse on Tuesday, which consisted of in their "last contact with the outside for ten days".
Champagne, the only vestige of New Year's Eve
The days, weighed down by jet lag, already look alike.
“The employees knock on the door, we then have to wait 30 seconds to retrieve our dish that we have chosen in advance, this evening it was pasta with bolognese and corn salad.
"And no question of counting on foie gras for Christmas Eve:" We will have meatballs with Stroganoff sauce, projects Clément, with little enthusiasm.
The hot meal is good, but it arrives at 5 pm, so you have to get used to eating early… ”The parents nevertheless thought about buying two bottles of champagne at the duty-free airport,“ one for the 24th. and one for the 31st, just to mark the occasion.
That's about all that could sound like New Years Eve.
The hotel offered the family some jigsaw puzzles and something to make a homemade Christmas tree / DR
While waiting for the deadline of January 6, it is therefore necessary to "occupy the mind".
The family were getting ready to do a little sports class in the bedroom and the children will have to revise their English before they go back to school in a month and a half after the summer vacation in Australia.
"We are not yet in good spirits, but I will not hide from you that it is a bit tense," says Clément Manoury.
We're still very tired, so we sleep a lot.
Fortunately we have the internet to communicate with families.
And then, if our two older children understand, our little boy asks us when he can go to the beach.
It's a bit hard… ”If they find the time long, they can always take a look at the window.
Other families in their situation have posted on their hotel room windows the count of the days left before they find themselves in the open air.
The Manourys plan to do the same.
Other families in isolation are counting the days./DR