JESSICA ROWE & PETER OVERTON

Rediscovering simple pleasures

To their children Allegra, 13, and Giselle, 11, Jessica Rowe and Peter Overton are “just daggy Mum and Dad”. But while usually their advice and counsel would be batted away, when the pandemic first hit the dial shifted a little. Each night, Jess and the girls would sit in front of the TV, watching Peter helm the late night news, disseminating the latest updates on the state of the nation. “It certainly focused my mind and also helped in talking to the kids in a calm way,” Peter says of how his job got the family through those early days of panic. “We were learning a whole new language: ‘The curve’, ‘social distancing’. It was an avalanche of information.”

Peter’s job also came in handy in a second way – he had direct access to NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, interviewing her several times. For Allegra, who had just begun Year 7, she used the opportunity to badger the politician for a return to the school room. “The realisation and clarity of the importance of school – the structure, the daily exposure to your friendship group, the importance of teachers – has been a real positive,” Peter says. “Hopefully for a lot of kids that will be something that they do carry through when they return to school full-time.”

“We are aware that we are lucky, that for many families this hasn’t been a great time,” adds Jess. “But what I’d like to hold onto and think about when we’re back in the outside world is the joy in the simplicity of things. Like many families we camped in our backyard during the school holidays. While I was lying in my sleeping bag, I looked out through the doorway of the zip-up tent under our tree thinking, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen this view of our backyard. And I also never realised how beautiful this is’.”