Five years ago today Australia closed its borders to all non-citizens and non-residents. Experts, and those who were directly impacted by the move, say there is much we can learn if a pandemic like COVID-19 happens again.

WA closed its borders shortly afterwards, on March 24, separating families and not allowing loved ones to return.

WA resident Bobby Meiklejohn says the border closure was a long emotional experience for her family, with her daughter unable to come home from Melbourne, where she had no immediate family, for nearly two years.

“She would be calling me up in tears and I couldn’t do anything about it except to tell her that I love her and to be strong,” she says.

Ms Meiklejohn says she understands the restrictions were in place to protect lives but separated family members needed more support or should have been allowed to come home.

“We could understand initially that some of those measures were agreeable but as time went on, there needed to be some way that people who were suffering mentally and emotionally could also be taken care of.

“My daughter should have been allowed to catch a plane, come home, isolate and carry on with her studies here in WA,” she says.

A 2022 study into the effects of these border closures on individuals found Ms Meiklejohn was just one of many who suffered during this time.

Flinders University senior research fellow Dr Candice Oster, who was involved in the study, says the responses from the public were substantial.

“The sense of anguish in people’s responses stood out for me. I had expected people to express frustration and distress, but this was deeper,” she says.

Dr Oster says in future pandemics more support needs to be provided.

“I would hope that at the very least we will acknowledge that these kinds of public health measures have a significant effect on people and provide people with the support they need to be able to cope.”

University of Adelaide post-doctoral researcher Dr Matthew Iasiello says the study attempts to capture the range of people affected.

“There were real mental health impacts of shutting the international borders and the implication of that being while borders were shut for a health reason it’s important to consider the undesired effects that may occur,” he says.

“At the time there were lots of unknowns and lots of people who will still say we did the right thing.”

Family counsellor Claire Marriot says she saw the firsthand effects on families separated due to the border closures.

Former chief executive of Tourism WA Richard Muirhead says communication is always important in supporting individuals with a state of emergency like COVID-19, but doesn’t always come first.

“I think there was a lack of education around it which is very easily explained by how out of the blue it came, there is very little time to put education together around this stuff as they don’t know,” he says. “The priority at the time wasn’t telling people about it. It was about protecting people lives and that’s what they set out to do.”

He says communication is always something we can improve on.

“There are many things that could be learnt in terms of communication. They could potentially have in place a pre-prepared communication plan that doesn’t necessarily know what it’s going to say but has the vehicles available to do it.”