Cootehill dad-to-be stranded in Oz

 

A Cootehill dad-to-be, stranded in Australia, is desperately trying to get back to Ireland where his pregnant partner is due to give birth to the couple’s first child in the coming months.
“It’s unbelievable here with the amount of people trying to get home - flights being cancelled, people losing thousands of Euros to airlines, it’s madness!” Owen Clerkin told The Anglo-Celt last week.
His comments came as the Irish Government committed to fly more young Irish people home on so-called ‘Rescue flights’.
Already the government has chartered flights from Perth and Peru, charging passengers €1,700 each for a seat, but many of those allocations are now used up.
When the Celt last spoke to Owen, he informed this newspaper he was booked on a flight from Melbourne via Doha and onto Dublin later this week.
He made the booking not long before receiving a message from the Irish Consulate in Australia advising: ‘If you wish to leave Australia we strongly encourage you to make plans to do so immediately. Flight restrictions and route cancellations are happening now on a daily basis worldwide and options for returning to Ireland are reducing dramatically. The situation is likely to deteriorate rather than improve in the coming weeks.’ The new ticket home cost Owen $2,000 Aus, and is at least the fourth flight Owen has booked to try to get home. He estimates, to date, the booking and rebooking of flights has cost him in the region of $5,000 Aus.
“It’s awful to see some of the stories out there, of people stuck. It’s incredible that there isn’t a law out there that can stop airlines from doing this to people, especially at times like this.”
Located in South Australia, two hours north of Adelaide, Owen still regards himself as “one of the lucky ones”.
He is employed on a large pig farm with 20,000 “growers” and around 10,000 sows.
He adds there’s no difficulty in “social distancing” for people once outside of the major cities. “Our closest town here is a 45-minute drive,” explained Owen. “I’m lucky to have it, there are a lot of people out of jobs at the moment.”
But driving his ambition to return home is the fact that his partner, Christine O’Riordan from Kerry, is pregnant.
Christine returned to Ireland due to medical costs in Australia, and arrived back in Ireland just weeks before the Coronavirus crisis hit proper.
“I don’t know how long this will all go on for. They’re talking about a lockdown of about six to nine months here.”
The couple had a house organised to rent in Cootehill.

Heartbreaking
Caolín Maguire from Blacklion and her partner Ben Burgess were left equally devastated by the chopping and changing of their flights by airlines. They’ve now secured a flight seat on flight with Qatar Airways costing €1,700 each.
They had been in Australia since last August but decided to come back to Ireland to pursue their studies, just before countries started to close borders and flights numbers reduced.

When speaking to the Celt, Caolín and Ben were staying with her aunt on the Central Coast, about an hour north of Sydney.
The couple spent an agonising day at the airport last week searching for flight options.
“We tried to chance our arm and it was absolutely the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen,” describes Caolín. “Old people, young people, mothers with young kids, just stranded, tears everywhere.”
Both now unemployed, and having given up their tenancy, she says: “If we didn’t have [her aunt] I don’t know what we would have done.”
Caolín adds of some airline operations at present: “Some of the prices we’re being quoted are criminal. They’re not seeing the sensitive human side of this at all. What they’re doing is inhumane.”
The Celt was contacted by several others in similar circumstances. A woman from Cootehill living in Melbourne now trying to get home had booked to fly last Wednesday, March 25, but had her flight cancelled at the last minute. She lost her job to the Coronavirus fallout and no longer has the finances to continue to live in Australia. “I’ve been trying to find other flights but they’re all being cancelled.”
Another woman, from Munterconnaught “stuck in Perth” only travelled over to Australia in January. She reported being quoted $12,000 Aus for a seat on a flight back to Ireland.