Opinion: From carefree holidaymakers to prisoners in our home

I stand on our high-rise balcony and stare out at a world I am not allowed to join, but which I know is changing before my eyes, writes Mike O’Connor.

DAY five of self-isolation and I’m sipping on a cuppa made with our second last tea bag.

Salvation, however, is on the way in the form of a friend making a food drop at our apartment door so all is not lost.

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There’ll be no thankful hugs and handshakes, just a quick ”knock-knock” on the door followed by their rapid departure.

What is lost is our luggage, which we last saw on March 16 when we checked it in for a flight from Peru to Santiago in Chile on our way back to home sweet home in Brisbane after a month of travel.

Also missing at the moment is the $28,000 that South American airline LATAM demanded we pay to fly us home as the COVID-19 virus crisis worsened in spite of us holding valid tickets for the journey issued by its codeshare partner Qantas.

I’ve never been held to ransom before, pay or be left behind being the choices. It is not a pleasant experience. The airline has promised to look into it. We will see.

We headed straight home from the airport and on arrival congratulated ourselves on having cleaned out the freezer and fridge and let the pantry supplies run down before we left.

Neighbours and friends will see us through, and I understand Dan Murphy home-delivers so there is light - viewed through the emerald-green glass of a white-wine bottle - at the end of the quarantine tunnel.

We slept on and off for the first few days, exhausted by the trauma of the return journey, and it is only now that we are beginning to appreciate the reality of our situation.

I stand on our high-rise balcony and stare out at a world I am not allowed to join, but which I know is changing before my eyes.

Somewhere out there the virus is stalking the population, seeking out the weak and the careless.

Mike O'Connor and Donna Parkin in more carefree times in Antarctica

Yesterday we worked off our frustrations with a cleaning frenzy. We now have the cleanest apartment in the country.

What to do next?

Normally our TV never goes on before 5pm and I regularly leave my mobile phone lying beside the bed.

Now the TV is our constant companion and my phone is rarely out of my hand, pinging every few minutes with news alerts as the crisis unfolds.

I’ve got plenty of time to think about the workers who for the first time in their lives will be dependent on Centrelink to survive and the business owners, large and small, who will see their life’s work evaporate.

When we left, 2020 had barely dawned and the Happy New Year wishes still echoed.

It’s all different now. Our complacency has been shattered.

We’re as vulnerable as the rest of the world.

I find myself eyeing off the couch and fight the urge to have an afternoon nap.

If I succumb, I know I won’t sleep tonight.

You’d like to think that when it ends, as it will, we’ll all be the stronger for it.

Whether or not this happens depends very much on our actions as members of a civilised society over the next few months.

It could go either way.

We could succumb to self-interest or look to the needs of others.

We must hope that when the bell stops tolling, we will be able to reflect on our actions and echo the Churchillian judgment that this was our finest hour.