At 12.01 am on Monday, November 23, the border between NSW and Victoria was officially reopened, 138 days after it was shut in response to Victoria's second wave of coronavirus.
By midnight on Sunday, the final vehicle to cross the Echuca-Moama checkpoint was long gone.
The final vehicle, a white Ford Focus, crossed the border at 11.40 pm, and there was no further action at the checkpoint until after midnight.
Police and traffic management were on site until past 2 am removing the checkpoint, which is now nothing more than a memory for those who passed through it during the past four and a half months.
Murray River Police District Inspector Paul Huggett said the evening ran smoothly.
"Everything went really well,” he said.
"Most of the people who came through were continuing through NSW, but we did have a couple of people who got their permits checked, then went back around the roundabout back to Echuca.
"We had a couple of cars show up early who we had to send back, but that was a very small number."
The tented areas around the police had been removed earlier in the day, and thankfully the weather held off.
"We didn't cop the rain thankfully,” he said.
"In the end it was an easy process to clear everything off and get things moving normally again."
The twin towns not only awoke to an open border, but to a 24th day with no new cases of COVID-19 in Victoria, a far cry from the situation that necessitated the border closure.
Victorians were also enjoying their first day without mandatory masks in socially distanced outside areas.
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