Hi everyone! It's been a while since I checked in on here. I received my 309 grant in February from the London office and obviously the whole global shutdown put a spanner in the works for getting over here... But I arrived on September 24 to Sydney! My husband and I flew separately and had 1 flight each get cancelled, but we both made it in the end.
I know that I for one had a lot of anxiety around what would happen once I got here, especially since I was flying separately from my husband. As our visa grants are all digitally attached to our passports, I felt like I was missing something. When I got off the plane, they just scanned my passport as normal and let me into Sydney without much hassle at all. After I got out of my hotel two weeks later and flew up to Queensland, though, they thoroughly checked my visa documents and needed me to provide some proof of address. Since I hadn't yet lived in Queensland, I showed my husband's Centrelink and that was sufficient.
I kept a diary of each day in quarantine that a lot of people in the Facebook groups for people in hotel quarantine found helpful (PS definitely join these groups before flying over! they are a wealth of useful information.)
http://kaptainkylie.com/2020/09/30/australian-hotel-quarantine-diaries/
I really hope you all get over here ASAP. It's such a relief after the UK lockdowns to be able to go out with almost complete freedom.
Timeline:
Applied 29 February, 2019
RFI 10 December, 2019
Visa Grant 5 February, 2020
Arrived in Aus 24 September, 2020