South Australia reopens its border, but not before keen travellers crashed its new EntryCheck website

South Australia has begun welcoming back travellers from Victoria and NSW after closing off its border to both states for 153 days.

As of today, fully-vaccinated travellers from all local government areas in Victoria and nearly all in New South Wales – with the exception of those from Byron Bay – are able to enter South Australia without having to quarantine.

On Friday, the South Australian government launched a new website to make the border entry process simpler for travellers and returning residents.

EntryCheck SA replaces the Cross Border Travel Registration application and assesses an individual’s vaccination status, departure location and COVID-19 risk. There are also some testing and daily symptom reporting requirements for arrivals into the state.

However, the new website’s debut has been nothing short of a shemozzle, with ABC News reporting that the EntryCheck portal has suffered multiple outages since launching.

After going live an hour later than the scheduled launch of 5pm (local time) on Friday, the EntryCheck SA portal went into meltdown on Monday morning due to a high volume of traffic, with users being told to “please try again later”, according to ABC News.

SA Premier Steven Marshall was forced to apologise for the crash, with users unable to access the site for almost an hour.

“The development of software like this would usually be a six- or a 12-month arrangement, especially one that was going to be under such a heavy use,” he explained.

A state government spokesperson said the EntryCheckSA platform has since been scaled up to meet the “significant demand”.

“Support teams are constantly monitoring the platform to ensure returning South Australians and travellers coming to our state are able to process their application smoothly,” the spokesperson told ABC News.