Ghost town: Covid scares clean out one of Qld’s biggest shopping centres
It is the fourth busiest shopping centre in the state but its corridors were eerily empty today after a series of Covid close contact venues were revealed there.
South West
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The fourth busiest shopping centre in Queensland, Indooroopilly Shopping Centre, has become a ghost town after a series of Covid close contact announcements has left most of its 360 stores shuttered.
Walking the corridors on levels one and two, and strolling through the normally packed food court, was an eerie experience today with almost nobody in sight.
The busiest it got was on level 1 where Coles and the nearby Woolies, plus Kmart, a chemist, Asian grocer Sunlit, BWS liquor outlet, Rebel sports store and Metro News were still open.
Even mighty Myer department store was closed.
A manager at SurfDiveNSki said he had not sold a single thing all day, with the only “customers’’ a smattering of homeless people and other “wanderers’’.
He spent his day doing a stocktake.
University of Queensland student Emily, who was with her housemate on a grocery and Dymocks run, said she needed some books for her uni course.
“We came together and went straight to where we had to go and are leaving now,’’ she said.
Another shopper, Peter, who also did not want his last name published, said either he or his wife came alone, never together, and only for groceries.
“We’re concerned of course because we live near St Peters (Lutheran College in Indooroopilly, another close contact site and opposite Indooroopilly State High School which has had multiple confirmed Covid cases),’’ he said.
Despite some Facebook comments from customers complaining of seeing shoppers without masks, everyone Quest Newspapers saw was wearing face protection.
Recorded safety information was played over the shopping centre audio system and QR codes were out the front of every store.
Not that it mattered. Quest saw only about 20-25 shops that were still open, including Aldi supermarket, QBD bookstore and Australia Post.
The atmosphere was eerily similar to the initial lockdown in March last year when almost all stores were closed.
Centre management said it had followed all Queensland Health guidelines since the start of the pandemic and had in place a range of measures including hand sanitisers, QR codes on all entrances and outside all stores and extra cleaning of surfaces touched by hands.
At time of publication (5.30pm, August 3) the following stores had recorded close contacts:
July 29
Myer, 8.50-9.30am
Seed Heritage, 9.20-9.35am
Target, 9.25-9.50am, 10-10.15am
H&M, 9.45-10.10am
Kmart, 10.10-10.45am
Stacks, 10.35-10.50am
Country Road, 10.45-11am
July 31
Mr Toys, 10.16-10.26am
Isakaya Sushu, 11.40-12.05
Kmart, 11.55-12.15, 12.05-12.15
Aldi, 11.57-12.38
BCC Library, 12-12.50
JB HiFi, 10.05-10.15am
Casual contacts were recorded at:
July 29
Female toilets near Forever New, 8.45-8.50am
Female toilets near Rebel, 10.50-10.55am
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