After migrating 15,574km from drizzly Northern Ireland to Canberra, Lee and Robert McMullan embarked on a Covid-fuelled rollercoaster ride that left them stranded overseas.
Their remarkable story begins in 2018 when Robert, a 30-year-old Presbyterian Minister, was called to serve as the assistant minister at St Andrews in Canberra. He took the job, and they decided to start a new life across the globe in Australia.
In late 2019, he received a call to relocate to St Stephens in Queanbeyan just as his wife Lee, 36, found out she was pregnant.
After packing up their house in Flynn, the couple decided to fly home to the UK so they could tell their family and friends the exciting news.
The plan was to return to Canberra in January 2020, but Lee was battling hyperemesis gravidarum, which gave them no choice but to put their homecoming on the backburner.
With Lee unfit to fly, the McMullans rebooked their flights for February 2020 then pushed them until March … right when the Australian border slammed shut due to the pandemic, thus beginning their two-year odyssey.
Their son, Benjamin, was due in July, so the pair decided to delay their return to Canberra until September.
When September rolled around, the border was still locked. They applied for an extension, and were successfully approved, but along came another roadblock – their visas had run out.
The Australian Immigration office responded to their extension request with an “I don’t know”, so they contacted the Australian High Commission in the UK and the Australian Embassy in Dublin, which were unable to help.
“It kind of left us in no man’s land,” Robert told Canberra Daily.
“We arrived with two suitcases, that was it – we had nothing. So, we had to start from scratch a little bit again,” Lee said.
With no work, no belongings, no home of their own, and a newborn, Robert and Lee relied on the generosity of family and friends to make ends meet.
“We lived in a Christian community, and we saw that through until Benjamin was born, and then after he was born, we managed to get some accommodation, but we could only commit three months at a time,” Robert said.
Living on edge for months on end, they held their breaths waiting to hear any news that would give them a glimmer of hope as to when the pandemic might be over.
“A couple of times, people gave us rumours and we’d have to check the news. A couple of times, they said, ‘I’ve just heard that the borders are going to be shut up until 2022.’ And this was in 2020 and we thought, ‘Are you serious?’,” Lee said.
Eventually, they worked out the only way they could to get back to Australia was to apply for brand new visas, taking $700 from their empty pockets.
While their initial visa arrived within five weeks, this wait was much longer.
“That visa took 13 months,” Robert said.
“We applied on the 7th of April [2021], and we got it at the start of May [2022],” Lee said.
Robert and Lee’s possessions in Canberra were being passed around to members of their congregation, who were kept in limbo, unsure if they had a minister.
“There was a stage where we looked at the map and were like, there’s parts of us all over Canberra,” laughed Robert.
Eventually, their visas arrived, and it was full steam ahead to return to Canberra.
Unable to work in Northern Ireland, Robert was ready to return to church and meet his new congregation in Queanbeyan, but leaving after two years of being back home was harder than they imagined.
“It was really hard. It was a hard experience, hard on our families to be so close to Benjamin, knowing all the time that we’re going to be going back,” Robert said.
“It was hard all the time just feeling like your life had stopped in some ways, because we felt so strongly that we’re meant to be here [in Canberra],” Lee said.
“I was like, ‘Why is it taking so long? What’s happening?’ and then, just, I suppose, trying to work out, ‘Well, how do we support ourselves while we are at home?’
“We had loads of people that were really, really generous and really faithful and it really helped us along the way and obviously, there was a lot of prayer, even from here. The church was very, very good, helping us even from across the water.
“There was quite a stressful time but at the same time, it was lovely because obviously we just had Benjamin, we had time with friends and family and that’s just so special because we didn’t expect to get it at that stage.”
Both Robert and Lee vividly recall the moment they found out they were allowed to come back to Australia.
“It was a Friday morning. We were lying in bed. I think my mum had kept Benjamin the night before, we’d had a bit of a sleep-in, which was nice,” smiled Lee.
“And the next thing, he’d always check his phone first thing, check emails to see if there was one through, and he just sent me this WhatsApp photograph and I opened it and there was a screenshot of the visa, and we just sat there in total silence. It was like ‘it’s actually arrived?’.
“It was so strange … a real bag of mixed emotions because it was like, ‘oh, right, this waiting’s over’. But then on the other hand, it was ‘oh, no, we have to do this leaving thing again’ and it’s harder because of Benjamin. So, you felt sick, but felt kind of like ‘ah, this is over.’ That was a very weird, very weird experience.”
Lee, Robert, and the now two-year-old Benjamin are safe and sound at St Stephen’s in Queanbeyan, and the toddler is possibly already developing an Australian accent.
“He’s started to say eight instead of ‘a-eight’. I don’t know whether he’s got it off the TV or whether it’s actually an Aussie thing,” laughed Lee.
The McMullan’s Covid-19 experience was a rollercoaster to say the least, but they remain thankful that it could have been worse and feel grateful to be back in their adopted home.
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