On Friday late afternoon, the day before lockdown began, I walked through the affluent Melbourne suburb of Albert Park on the way to the beach. Just like mid-March 2020, the outdoor cafés did not give an impression that drastic lifestyle changes were on the way.
Middle-aged men with shaved heads sat outdoors with their beers. They were relaxed and made flippant comments about how disappointed they were to not go out for Valentine’s Day dinner. I couldn’t tell how serious they were. Pretty blond middle-aged women in dresses complemented the tables. One was reading a novel in the sun.
This was not the area of Melbourne where lockdown would be felt the hardest. At the pier, skinny but confident teenagers hovered shirtless apart from their backpacks, a bearded young man chatted up a young lady holding a dog on a leash, and the fishermen discussed burley and pinkies as their untouched rods dangled out to sea.
The next day the state of Victoria was to be locked down for five days and we pray not any longer. Memories were perhaps going back to the half-forgotten four-month hiatus we took in winter, and the seven total months we spent under key in 2020. I had taken an illicit walk along the grey, shuttered Clarendon Street in October surrounded by continuously closed businesses, wondering how much longer this could go on.
Summer lockdown is a bit crueller. The restaurants, who had ordered their Valentine’s Night food supplies, would now have to bin them. The owner of my local remarked that the cumulative effect of this lockdown on his business would last longer than the prescribed five days, as people avoid their old café habits once they are broken even after lockdowns finish. He said these five days would set him back a month.
Although the hated five-kilometre curfew began at 11:59, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews stated that he hoped people would begin a self-imposed lockdown instantaneously, but he knew the score. Besides Friday night drinks, February 12 was Chinese New Year. The restaurants would still be full that night, although by 7:30pm traffic was relatively deserted. The virus rate was still low – 19 active cases by Friday – but would the virus find some new homes on our last night of freedom?
Australians have separately rallied around their leaders, Federation be damned. Nonetheless, we will debate for a decade if we needed to be more balanced in the virus’ treatment, with more consideration of mental health, young people and businesses alongside the quarantine. It’s surprising: in the land of Ned Kelly, do we revere our authority too much in this country?
It is generally still the best of times here in Melbourne. On Friday at least I could still stroll to the beach during a global pandemic. Friends in Bolivia have reported some truly end-of-days occurrences. Bodies uncollected for ten days; unofficial neighbourhood-organised cremations; US$60,000 hospital bills for families of the deceased in a country with a pre-pandemic US$3,550 GDP per capita.
Here, in contrast, we collect Job Seeker from a Centrelink whom the pandemic taught to finally treat people as human beings, and play another round of Words With Friends. Australia can side-step any crisis.
We can handle the five days locked down for sure, there is no alternative – we took 80 and then 120-day stretches last year. Certain people even welcomed the previous hated lockdowns as a way to catch up with frazzled 21st Century life.
In my anecdotal experience people are split on this eternal issue, but generally accepting. But what government in history has ever had the moral authority to say that you can’t meet up with your mate?
I started driving home around 10pm, everyone needing to beat the buzzer and get home. In the next car a guy called, “Have a good lockdown. Whisky and Netflix, that how you get through it.”
Love is lost 