Despite horror stories emerging from tourists being stranded in New Zealand during COVID 19 lockdown, it’s not all bad.

Belgium visitors to the region Niels De Wolf (24) and Hanne Sneyers (25) who are in New Zealand on a year-long working visa, found themselves stranded in Te Anau on the eve of the Level 4 lockdown last month.

With no employment available, initially they had no idea what they might do and considered taking a repatriation flight back to Europe. However, discussions with their parents encouraged the pair to stay in New Zealand and at that time their only option was to book a motel at one of the few in Te Anau still offering bubble accommodation and they then prepared for an lengthy, albeit expensive, lockdown month.

Mr De Wolf said his parents were concerned about them planning to come home and said it would be much safer to stay in New Zealand and offered financial help, which they were grateful for.

After a few days in the motel the pair, who are registered members of WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), were offered voluntary harvest jobs under the scheme on a nearby saffron farm which provides accommodation and meals in return for voluntary labour.

“Actually it’s been pretty good” Mr De Wolf said, “no hardship at all” unlike some of the horror stories they have heard of from fellow travellers who have also been stranded mid journey. He considers themselves very fortunate “for some people it’s really hard”.

Another migrant worker who is stranded in Invercargill also considers herself very lucky after she missed the last scheduled international flight to Canada on March 24.

Canadian, Mallory Foster, was supposed to join her Australian fiancé on the flight to North America, but with borders closing to foreigners, he took an earlier flight to avoid being turned back at the border.

However, in the meantime, domestic flights in New Zealand became restricted to essential travellers only and so Ms Foster missed out on making the connection to her planned international flight.

In her favour, Ms Foster has been able to receive the wage subsidy through her employes, Starbucks, and she said, lucky enough to have friends in Invercargill who have put her up during the lockdown period.

She has since had three subsequent flights cancelled. She is now waiting hopefully on the latest departure offered on May 7. 

“Air NZ has been really amazing” she said, “and they have waived any fees”.

Others, though are finding the going tough.

Many are travelling in vans and depending on getting seasonal jobs to fund their travels. Many don’t have the financial backup from family or savings, and because a lot of them are WWOOFers they are not entitled to government wage subsidies. Many don’t have their own transport so cannot actually take up any volunteer job offers without the means to get there.

The Southland App looked into how big the problem of unemployed migrant WWOOFers might be and what assistance or support could be available, but that category of migrant workers seemed to be outside the net of support agencies who have no way of identifying the needs of this group of visitors or even who they are, and there doesn’t appear to be any sort of register for this group of people.

On a recent community social media post, one group of people pleaded for help to try to get transport to Christchurch for a repatriation flight, outlining their dire situation.

From the post of Olivier Poncelet:

UPDATE 14 April : “We are a couple of foreigners stuck in Te Anau because the airlines canceled our tickets to go back home……we used almost all our savings to buy some tickets to return home but they were eventually cancelled by the airlines and still pending for refunds. So, we decided to stay here with the money we have left because we stopped to rely (sic) on commercial companies that also abused the situation later to ask unreasonable and not accessable (sic) prices for us……Some of us decided to stay in Te Anau because it was safer here in the countryside than in Christchurch that has much more cases of Covid19.

But this decision ended to be a kind of trap, for different reasons related to government's decisions. We may have an opportunity to catch an affordable repatriation flight …..but the options are very limited without car, driving license with us, and no more bus transportation. We cannot afford a taxi to go for a 691 km trip. The conditions asked by the NZ government are that we have only have 24h to move before the flight, which complicate things. We are only allowed to go directly to the airport. No flight from Dunedin… The airport is closed in Queenstown also.”

LAST Update 21 April : 

 “Finally, we are at the airport !.....We could get the last repatriation flight on time and safe. Exhausted, but happy ! ….A tourist is also a human before to be (sic) a banknote or a story in a newspaper. We will come back one day. Te Anau is a part of us for ever. Thanks to all the people that have given us a hand just by solidarity. Thank you Te Anau Community Information.”