AUSTRALIA WILL BE WORTH THE WAIT

Normal rating: 7.5/10 Traffic-light rating: GREEN

While holidaying Brits can’t come in just yet, Australia has been busy reacquainting itself with “almost normal”. Cafés are buzzing, stadiums roaring and skiers tearing down snowy slopes. Down in Hobart, some 1,500 skinny-dippers marked the winter solstice with a bracing dip in the River Derwent, an appropriate finale to provocative arts festival Dark Mofo. Earlier in the month, 55,656 spectators filled Perth’s Optus Stadium for the annual Dreamtime Game, Australian Rules Football’s tribute to its Indigenous players. If you were able to be in Brisbane this weekend, options include the Jensens’ album launch in a converted wartime hangar, or European masterpieces on loan from New York’s Met. While QRcode check-ins are the norm, masks are not; a luxury afforded when community transmission is almost always zero.

Not that Australia is completely out of the bush just yet. Leaks in hotel quarantine are a constant threat to the country’s zero-Covid approach and sudden stateborder closures are always a holiday risk. Sydney is currently scrambling to contain a small but growing outbreak, while further south, a handful of community transmissions hurled Victoria into a twoweek lockdown late last month. Now back to zero, Victoria is cautiously edging back to the near-normal it was relishing – one where bars and galleries bustle, performers entertain and footy fanatics shout from the sidelines. The steps are small but promising; among them, increased caps at stadiums, restaurants, bars and private gatherings. Masks remain mandatory indoors for now, a small price to pay to snoop around a secret, art-filled station ballroom or swill a spritz or three with friends.