Travellers are pouring in, families are reuniting and business owners are rejoicing as South Australia relaxed the majority of its border restrictions on Tuesday.
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Anyone wishing to travel into the state will be able to, provided they use a new online border entry app called EntryCheckSA, which assesses an individual's risk based on the local government area they are travelling from.
For many in the Wimmera it was a sigh of relief, especially for families separated since the start of the pandemic on either side of the border.
Kaniva puppet shop owner Julie French was one of the many Wimmera business owners affected by the hardened border restrictions, losing a crucial supply of tourist traffic to her shop.
She called the announcement a 'highlight' of the past 20 months, and looked to get her store in order for the Christmas period.
"We can work towards a date where I can get the store back to where it was before and maybe start re-ordering.
"To sit here and see the cars going back and forth, it really has been a highlight."
Ms French said she expects it to take some weeks before people on either side of the border get comfortable with the idea of cross-border tourism.
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"There are cars passing all of the time. It is not a constant stream, but they are there and they are on a mission to get to the border," she said.
"So they are not actually stopping in Kaniva yet. What we find is that it takes just a little while for people to become comfortable about stopping again.
"Within a few days we hope to see people stopping and enjoying Kaniva, and coming into my puppet shop.
"It is wonderful that now we can cross the border and have our family and loved ones come over here and celebrate seeing each other after so many months apart."
Apsley's Border Inn co-owner Simon Robinson was also optimistic about the coming months.
The consortium of 12 farming families who own the Border Inn raised concerns in May as the pub saw falling profits in the face of the border closure.
"We are hoping that the South Australians will come back, but we have got a feeling that it will take a while," he said.
"Everyone has become accustomed with the change in lifestyle, and even Victorians don't seem to get out as much as they did pre-COVID."
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The Border Inn has only been operating on Friday nights, due to a lack of patrons in the area.
Mr Robinson said government support was crucial in keeping the business afloat, and hoped a future increase in patronage would allow the group to continue with plans to sell the business.
"We would have been gone in the first two months if it were not for the government, so I can't thank them enough. I really want to stress that," he said.
"We all think it is going to take a while for people to get back into it. There are still people who are confused about the border and what we can and can't do.
"It'll take a few weeks for people to have the confidence to come over here and know that they will not be locked out of their state."
For Cross Border Call Out founder Paula Gust, the announcement was a win for the border community.
However celebrations were cut short, as Ms Gust got to work on helping people navigate the new border travel system.
Under the new rules, cross-border community members will continue to use their previous cross-border travel permits until they expire, and then move onto the South Australian government's new system.
Ms Gust said it was good to see South Australia police still honouring the existing permits, and that free travel to Adelaide was a welcome relief for many cross border community members.
"The restrictions caused a lot of issues because a lot of people couldn't get to appointments, and the exemption process, as we know, was inefficient," she said.
"It has alleviated so many headaches to not have to apply for an exemption to go to a medical appointment in Adelaide now. So many people are relieved."
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