Mum’s dinners? I’ll survive
Was buying a one-way ticket to Melbourne an omen? Tempting fate? I did it precisely because this could happen, yet don’t feel smug at having planned for the worst.
Finally in my home city for a holiday after 15 months stuck in Auckland where I work and live, I’m now stranded in my teenage bedroom for at least another five days to my already month-long trip.
The room hasn’t changed much: Bob Dylan poster, single bed mattress, bookcase half-stacked with CDs, guitar amp, mic stand, handwritten periodic table bluetacked to the wall.
When news of Melbourne’s sevenday lockdown hit on Thursday, a few colleagues sent messages to check how I was.
On the scale of journalistic strandings in war zones, oppressive dictatorships, and natural disasters, sitting down to my mother’s cooking most nights lacks an edge of danger.
So the situation isn’t the “worst scenario”. It’s just another lockdown, but a little more logistically elaborate for me. The transtasman bubble is paused until 8pm on Friday, June 4, so I’ll be working from Melbourne until at least next Saturday.
As soon as we heard the MCG stadium was identified as a location of interest during Saturday’s AFL game seating 23,000 people, everyone in the city probably mentally accepted a lockdown was inevitable. It came two days later.
Among the Melburnians I’ve spoken to about yet another outbreak, there is undeniably a little bit of contempt for the Victorian Government which seems to either be incompetent or cursed.
But I also realise we the public are two-faced on this matter. The health officials are damned if they do and damned if they don’t when it comes to snap lockdowns.
It’s also taken this event for me to fully appreciate the Ardern Government’s hyper-cautious elimination approach to Covid. Melbourne had four community cases on Tuesday morning and I am fairly certain if Jacinda Ardern was Victorian Premier, the city would have been put into lockdown that night. Who knows how much spread that might have prevented.
Yet Australia’s vaccine rollout has been superior, with 3.8 million doses given to New Zealand’s 560,000-odd. My parents, an aunt and my 96-year-old grandmother have had their first jabs.
People in similar demographics around the city probably gain a certain peace of mind heading into this lockdown.
But I sense a lingering underlying trauma among some from Melbourne’s JuneOctober lockdown last year. It was one of the longest hard lockdowns in the world.
People almost avoid the subject with a kind of “don’t mention the war” neurosis. But there’s also a battle-worn resignation to this lockdown that seems different to the slightly more alarmist and emotional responses of Aucklanders as they headed into lockdowns this year. New Zealand has had it good and there is almost a spoilt naivety to the average Kiwi’s expectations around personal freedom in the Covid era.
Here, I’m checking the locations of interest on the Victorian Health coronavirus site regularly. The cluster is now at 30 community cases. Melbourne’s second-biggest sports venue, Marvel Stadium, has been added to the now 121 public exposure sites for another AFL match attended by 33,000 people.
There’s a lot more mass carousing at these footy games than a Bluff wedding. June 4 may be an optimistic end date to my stint as a reluctant Melbourne correspondent.