My name is Ziggy
I’m a 24 year old female Australian citizen trying to get back home from the Netherlands.
In May 2019 my mother moved from Australia to the Netherlands on short notice to assume care of my elderly grandmother, who had a stroke and fell down her stairs resulting in a broken leg. She is 87 and also suffers dementia. In June 2020, my mother was involved in an accident resulting in the need for reconstructive surgery and rendering her unable to stand for 8 weeks.
Obviously, this also removed her ability to continue the care she had been providing to my grandmother. There were no other relatives in the Netherlands who could assume care of them both, so I made the decision to fill this role. This involved me resigning from my full-time position in Sydney and relinquishing my rental house.
I applied for and received an exemption from Australian Border Force at this time to travel to the Netherlands and assume full-time care of my mother and grandmother. It has been a difficult two and a half months at times with the pressures of caring for my mother and grandmother, not being able to work and there for having no income due to that commitment and being in another country, and really missing my partner, family and home in Australia.
But I still feel that I made the right decision, the only decision really, to come to my family’s aid at this time. Thankfully my mother has recovered well and I booked a flight home as soon as I knew when I was going to be able to return (which was the end of July).
I was supposed to be going home today but I was bumped from my flight seven days ago. The next available flights are in November and there is no way I can afford a business or first class ticket after being unable to work for the last two and a half months. I am stranded like so many others, until the caps are raised or removed so we can go home.