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Qantas and Jetstar are bringing forward the restarting of popular flight routes a month early after the New South Wales and Victorian governments revealed their roadmaps out of coronavirus lockdowns.

Flights between Victoria and NSW will now begin on November 5, earlier than the previous date of December 1. The change is based on Victoria's reopening plan.

However, as previously flagged, Qantas will temporarily reroute its flagship Perth-London service until at least April 2022 due to border restrictions with WA.

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International flights are on track to restart from December 18, when Australia is expected to have reached National Cabinet's "Phase C" vaccination threshold of 80 per cent.

The carriers have also delayed the restart of domestic flights between Western Australia and Victoria or New South Wales by two months to February 1, 2022, based on border assumptions.

Qantas is in talks with the Northern Territory Government and Darwin Airport to assess operating the direct London flight from Darwin during this time.

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https://omny.fm/shows/the-9news-lunch-podcast/sept-27-the-former-cheerleader-in-court-over-prote/embed?style=cover

Darwin has been used as a hub for its repatriation flights to various destinations across Europe, Asia and the Middle East over the past 12 months.

Qantas says discussions for what would be a daily Melbourne-Darwin-London service will focus on the logistics of domestic and international transit.

If this service can't operate through Darwin, it will instead fly Melbourne-Singapore-London until at least April 2022.

A decision on the exact routing is likely to be made within the next two weeks.

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Qantas CEO Alan Joyce welcomed the restart of flights due to the take up of the vaccine.

"We're now planning to ramp up flying between Melbourne and Sydney, which is usually the second busiest air route in the world, almost a month earlier than expected," Mr Joyce said.

"There are also a lot of regional destinations that will open up for the first time since June, which is great news for tourism as well as family and friends who can't wait to see each other again.

"Based on our discussions with Western Australia we know their borders won't be open to New South Wales and Victoria until early next year, so we've sadly had to cancel the flying we had planned on those routes in the lead-up to Christmas.

"We will maintain a minimum service for people with permits to travel, though, as we have throughout the pandemic.

"At this stage, WA doesn't intend to open to international travel until sometime next year, so we'll unfortunately have to temporarily move our Perth-London service until at least April 2022.

"Instead of operating from Melbourne to Perth and then on to London as it usually does, this flight will operate from Melbourne to London via either Darwin or Singapore, depending on conversations we're having with the NT in the coming weeks."

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Qantas says that should the state or federal roadmaps change, and flights are cancelled, customers may be eligible for a refund, credit voucher or to change the date of their travel.

Regional flights within NSW will also significantly increase from October 25, taking it to around 40 per cent of pre-COVID levels.

The news from Qantas comes as NSW Premier Gladys Berejilkian has unveiled a three-stage roadmap out of lockdown, with the state expected to reach the 80 per cent double-dose vaccination milestone before the end of October.

However, fully vaccinated NSW residents must now wait until that 80 per cent double-dose mark, rather than the previously touted 70 per cent milestone, to travel freely around the state.

READ MORE: Australians could soon test for COVID-19 at home as rapid antigen tests seek approval

A US town that disappeared more than 60 years ago has re-emerged in drought.

The town of Rockport, in Utah, was submerged in 1957 when the nearby Wanship Dam was built, creating the Rockport Reservoir.

However as the reservoir's waters have now retreated due to a prolonged drought gripping the west coast – rocky foundations have once again seen the light of day.

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Drone pilot Devon Dewey has shared several photos of the previously drowned town, which he snapped on a recent flyby.

"It was really interesting to be standing at an overlook for the reservoir and to see faint traces of foundations of old homes and a road all below where the water would normally be," Mr Dewey told 9News.com.au.

"Using a drone to get a higher perspective helped to see where structures once stood so many decades ago."

It is estimated 27 families lived in the area in the 1950s when the reservoir was created.

They were forced to relocate once construction of the dam began.

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Over the northern summer, Gabby Petito set out with her fiance, Brian Laundrie, to travel across the country in her white Ford van, planning to hit national parks throughout the western US.

For the past year, the young woman regularly posted pictures with Mr Laundrie on her Instagram account, sharing last May she couldn't wait to start "travelling the world" with him and several weeks later, in July 2020, announcing he had asked her to marry him.

"I said yes!" Ms Petito had written in an Instagram caption.

"Everyday is such a dream with you."

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She documented their trip this northern summer on social media, posting pictures of herself smiling in Kansas' Monument Rocks, posing on the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado and taking in the views of Utah's Bryce Canyon National Park.

But when the camera turned off, a different reality was unfolding.

The trip seemed to be straining the relationship and the two were seen arguing by passers-by – at one point so intensely, at least one person called authorities to report it.

Ms Petito called her mother regularly, and those conversations appeared to reveal there was "more and more tension" in Ms Petito's relationship, according to a police affidavit for a search warrant of an external hard drive found in the couple's van.

In late August, Ms Petito's calls to her mother stopped. The regular social media posts ceased. And on September 11, her family reported her missing.

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"She would go off the grid, you know, while she was out there, doing her van-life stuff, exploring these different areas," Jim Schmidt, Ms Petito's stepfather, had said when she was missing.

"It wasn't uncommon for her to go off for a few days at a time but she'd always make her way back to someplace where she could get on to a Wi-Fi connection, upload to her Instagram, make phone calls, FaceTime to come home."

The FBI announced on September 19 authorities had found human remains "consistent with the description of" Ms Petito.

The remains were later confirmed to be those of Ms Petito. The FBI said the initial determination for Ms Petito's manner of death is homicide.

A search for Mr Laundrie, who returned to the couple's Florida home on September 1 without Ms Petito and vanished two weeks later, is ongoing.

New, slowly emerging details help paint a picture of what the days before Ms Petito's death may have looked like.

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The two were stopped by police

On August 12, nearly three weeks before Mr Laundrie arrived back in Florida at the home he shared with Ms Petito and his parents, someone drove by a couple with a white van with a Florida licence plate and called 911 to report they saw "the gentleman was slapping the girl."

"Then we stopped," the caller told dispatchers, according to a, emergency audio recording from that day that was provided by the Grand County Sheriff's Office.

"They ran up and down the sidewalk. He proceeded to hit her, hopped in the car and they drove off."

A Moab, Utah, police officer who spotted the van later wrote in a police report he saw Ms Petito sitting in the passenger seat and "crying uncontrollably."

In bodycam footage from the Moab Police Department that was obtained by CNN, an officer is heard asking the young woman, who was visibly shaken, to step out of the van and sit inside his vehicle in hopes of helping her calm down.

Ms Petito said the two had been fighting that morning and going through "some personal issues."

"I have OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) and sometimes I get really frustrated," Ms Petito said, adding later, "He wouldn't let me in the car before."

READ MORE: Top doctor says cancelling Christmas travel is 'a step backwards'

When the officer asked why, the young woman responded, "He told me I needed to calm down, but I'm perfectly calm."

"At no point in my investigation did Gabrielle stop crying, breathing heavily, or compose a sentence without needing to wipe away tears, wipe her nose or rub her knees with her hands," officer Daniel Scott Robbins wrote in the report.

Officer Robbins wrote he did not believe the "situation escalated to the level of a domestic assault as much as that of a mental health crisis." He suggested the two separate for the night, to which Ms Petito and Mr Laundrie agreed.

"I was able to contact Safe Haven and get Brian a hotel room for the night," Officer Robbins wrote.

"I instructed both Brian and Gabrielle to take advantage of this time apart to relax their emotions … also asked them to avoid contacting each other until the next morning if at all possible."

Ms Petito kept the van while Officer Robbins took Mr Laundrie to the hotel, the officer wrote, adding that they both had their mobile phones on them in case of emergency.

READ MORE: 'Red flags' US police missed in Gabby Petito case

A witness on site wrote in a sworn statement the two were "talking aggressively at each other and something seemed off."

Chris, the witness – whose last name was redacted in the document provided to CNN by Moab police – said it appeared the two were arguing over control of Ms Petito's phone, and said he saw the young woman at one point "punching (Laundrie) in the arm and/or face and trying to get into the van."

"Why do you have to be so mean," Chris wrote he heard Ms Petito say to Mr Laundrie, although Chris added that he couldn't be sure whether the comment was meant to be taken seriously.

A National Park Service ranger who also responded to the call spent about an hour and a half with Ms Petito and warned her that her relationship with Mr Laundrie had markings of a "toxic" one, Melissa Hulls, the ranger, told the Deseret News of Utah.

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"I was imploring with her to re-evaluate the relationship, asking her if she was happy in the relationship with him, and basically saying this was an opportunity for her to find another path, to make a change in her life," Ms Hulls said.

A post on Ms Petito's Instagram account on the same day was tagged at the Arches National Park near Moab. A caption on that post says the couple had spent some time taking photos and "drawing and enjoying the nature," near the arches.

Ms Petito FaceTimed with her mother

Ms Petito called and texted her mother regularly throughout the trip, according to the search warrant which described an apparent growing tension between Ms Petito and Mr Laundrie.

On August 24, Ms Petito FaceTimed with her mother and told her she was leaving Utah and heading to the Teton mountain range, in Wyoming, Petito family lawyer Richard Stafford has said.

A day later, the mother and daughter texted again, during which time her family believed Ms Petito was in the Tetons, Mr Stafford said previously.

'Commotion' inside a restaurant

On August 27, five days before Mr Laundrie arrived in Florida, a Louisiana couple who was vacationing in Jackson, Wyoming, said they saw Ms Petito and Mr Laundrie involved in a "commotion" as they were leaving The Merry Piglets Tex-Mex restaurant.

Nina Angelo, who was at the restaurant with her boyfriend, said Ms Petito was in tears and Mr Laundrie was visibly angry, going in and out of the restaurant several times and showing anger toward the staff around the hostess stand.

READ MORE: Boy from Afghanistan is finally home with his new family in Florida

A restaurant manager told CNN she saw "an incident" at the restaurant on August 27 but declined to give her name or describe what happened and said the restaurant did not have surveillance video of the incident.

On the same day, Ms Petito's mother received what she described as an "odd text" from her daughter, the search warrant said, and was concerned something was wrong.

"Can you help Stan, I just keep getting his voicemails and missed calls," the message read, according to the search warrant. Stan was a reference to Ms Petito's grandfather, who her mother said Ms Petito never referred to that way, according to the warrant.

Also on August 27, a pair of vloggers' GoPro video captured Ms Petito's van in the Spread Creek Dispersed Camping Area, where Ms Petito's body was later found, between 6pm to 6.30pm local time.

The vloggers, Kyle and Jenn Bethune, said when they saw the van's Florida licence plates they considered stopping to say hello, since they were from Florida as well, but Jenn Bethune said nobody seemed to be around the vehicle.

"We figured maybe they were out hiking or they were just chilling inside," Kyle Bethune added. "There (were) no doors open."

The FBI has asked for information from anyone who was in the camping area between August 27 and August 30, who may have had contact with the couple or seen the vehicle.

According to the timeline Mr Stafford previously provided, the last text from Ms Petito came on August 30, but her family doubted it was her who wrote the message.

"No service in Yosemite," that message read, according to Mr Stafford.

Where Ms Petito was found

On September 19, officials announced the discovery of remains in the Spread Creek Dispersed Camping Area in the Bridger-Teton National Forest.

A coroner later confirmed Ms Petito's identity. The restaurant where authorities have said Ms Petito was last seen is about 40 kilometres from Spread Creek.

A federal arrest warrant issued last week for Mr Laundrie for the use of unauthorised access devices "in the District of Wyoming and elsewhere" alleges that sometime between August 30 and September 1, Mr Laundrie is suspected of using a debit card and PIN number for accounts that did not belong to him for charges of more than US$1000 ($1376).

An lawyer for Mr Laundrie's family said last Thursday the warrant is related "to activities occurring after the death of Gabby Petito and not related to her actual demise."

"The FBI is focusing on locating Brian and when that occurs the specifics of the charges covered under the indictment will be addressed in the proper forum," lawyer Steve Bertolino said.

By Jamie Tahana, RNZ Efforts to reduce the number of children and young people dying appear to have stagnated.That is the finding of the government’s Child and Mortality Review Committee, which analysed 2666 children aged between…

Gabby Petito, 22, was reported missing by her family on September 11 after travelling around the US in a van with her partner, Brian Laundrie. Authorities confirmed human remains found in Wyoming are those of Ms Petito, and her funeral has been held in New York.