Well, how did I get here?

Applying to leave Australia during Covid border lockdown

I’m conscious of not bombarding people with posts, but I wanted to get this one done as it is a key matter I wanted to write about here, and because a number of people have asked that I explain the process we went through.

The first thing we did was get vaccinated. It wasn’t a specific requirement for travelling, but we weren’t going to leave before we were jabbed, and it was obvious that any sort of travel was likely to be easier if you were double dosed.

As I noted in an earlier post, the requirement varies from airline to airline, but you either get vaxed or you show a negative test that isn’t more than 3 days old.

After that, we investigated getting a visa to live in France. We thought it would be best to have the visa sorted before we applied to leave the country, and that proved correct: being able to show the visa helped get approval to leave.

To stay in France for longer than 90 days, you need an extended visa, and that involves a bit of a process. Bien sur.

You can’t, for instance, apply for a long-stay visa more than three months before you intend to leave. Given the unreliability of flights, and the uncertainty about how long Australian approval would take, we had to gamble a little with the timing of the application, but we aimed to leave Australia in early September.

So, before applying for the visa, we booked the tickets.

It wasn’t too hard to find flights, and the prices weren’t inflated much. We originally booked with Etihad, but that flight was cancelled, and we ended up with Air France, though Cathay Pacific handled the two international legs.

En passant, the time of the Paris-Nice flight was changed by an hour a week or so before we left Australia, and then we were delayed in Hong Kong, which meant missing the Nice connection anyway. We were automatically rebooked on a later Paris-Nice flight and got to that with no problems.

Again, it underlines the way in which there is now a presumption that you have a phone—and some form of public WIFI—because it was all handled via app/email including the issuing of new boarding passes.

I don’t know what we would’ve done without this technological ability as you are, theoretically, for Covid reasons, not allowed to pass outside the transit area when moving between flights. This includes the requirement that your luggage is booked through to the final destination: if for some reason your carrier can’t do that, you can’t travel (on that flight, anyway).

To continue, we were applying to leave Australia from Melbourne where there is no French Consulate, and so the process is handled by an intermediary, in an office on Swanston Street.

We were fingerprinted, had to provide a printed record of our bank statements (showing current balance, yes, really), passports obviously, as well as written declaration that we would not seek employment during the period of the extended visa.

We had to provide proof of where we would be staying in Nice, and, most important of all, proof of international travel insurance that offered full cover, and I mean everything, including Covid. Such insurance isn’t cheap.

The intermediary sends all this information, including your actual passport (gulp), to the Consulate in Sydney, and then you wait.

We then had about three email exchanges with the Consulate once they received our application, asking for clarification on certain things, including where we would be living (the complication being that we would be moving after the first 12 days). Despite all that, the matter was handled in a timely manner, presumably because no-one much else is travelling to France from Australia at the moment.

A few weeks later, our passports arrived by registered mail, with our visas inside.

The further requirement was to register and validate the visa once we were arrived in France, as you can see:

We were also told to apply for a pass sanitaire, the French vax pass that is necessary to do many things here, and I will write about that separately, because I have an odd story to tell.

Okay, so we are lining up all our ducks.

• We are vaccinated

• We have health insurance

• We have plane tickets

• We have an extended French visa

• We have applied for the pass sanitaire

Next, we applied to the Australian Government to leave the country, which meant applying for an exemption.

This is where it gets a bit more complicated, and as you can see at the link above, there are a number of specific categories that might apply for such an exemption.

We crossed several categories, but the most productive one for us—and what is likely to be of most use to others—is to be able to meet the requirement to stay away for at least three months.

Even if you are going for other reasons, the three-month rule nearly always applies.

Another point that might be helpful: our application to leave was a joint application, to cover us both. I think that helped. It meant me being seen as accompanying Tanya (handbag!) rather than travelling for my own reasons and needing separate permission.

Tanya provided stat decs and a letter from her employer saying that, after the period of visiting our son in France, a period for which Tanya had long service leave, we would then go to London where Tanya’s firm has an office and where she would be working for a while. We also provided proof of where we would be staying in France and the flight itinerary.

But note: even without the stat decs about work, I think we would’ve been given permission to leave because we were staying away for more than three months. From talking with others who have been given permission to leave, this is the crucial factor.

And that is how we got here. End to end, it took about six months, and I have to say, all the officials we dealt with, directly and via email, were nothing but helpful.

Nonetheless, right up until we were on the plane, even then, I was half expecting something to go wrong, for a flight to be cancelled or the rules for leaving to be changed. Having the written permission document calmed me down, but the entire process still seems a bit mercurial.

I hope this information helps others who are looking at travelling. If there are some more specific questions you want to ask, I will do my best to answer (I’ve probably left something out), so use comments or contact me directly.

Stray photo of a Nice (and nice) bookshop