Australia left thousands of citizens stranded abroad in the pandemic. But it let the French rugby team in.

SYDNEY — Sam Guthrie missed his brother’s wedding and his grandmother’s funeral, and couldn’t be around to help when his father was in the hospital being treated for an infection after hip surgery.

His voice trembles down the phone from Belfast as he reflects on how far he feels from home. It’s not the distance, he says, some 11,000 miles, but the unease of not knowing when he’ll get back to Australia.