Coronavirus: Unto the beach once more, dear friends

These are confusing times when Liberals are more controlling than Labor or Greens councillors.

Authorities round up a lone swimmer at a closed Coogee Beach on Friday. Photographer: Adam Yip

One old bloke arrived just after 6am wearing a hot pink swimming cap and BONDI on his bum. Others, with flippers, were in full-body wetsuits marking autumn even if the water temperature was in summer mode. Many moved up and down imaginary ocean lanes, heads bobbing up, arms bending, one over the other in fluid strokes. One older woman stepped out of her leopard-print onesie, revealing her trim bikini-clad body as she made her way into the sea. A few old men had a quick natter after their swim, standing on the shoreline, by deliberation or not, 1.5m apart.

On Tuesday morning, Clovelly, a small beach in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, was open for business again. Truth be told, throughout the COVID-19 shutdown, this idyllic little inlet of a beach between two promenades has been unofficially open for more rebellious, less patient swimmers not put off by police tape and barricades. Many of them donning goggles, a splash of larrikin spirit, some disdain for authority, and a large dose of common sense. As John Stuart Mill enunciated using only slightly different words, an early morning dip in the sea doesn’t cause anyone any harm.

Next Tuesday, the long stretch of sea rippling with motley shades of blue will reopen at Bondi Beach too. Before packing your tote bag, understand that parts of the ocean, not the beach, are open, and only for very limited business. There will be a carefully marked one-way “swim and go” access points for “ocean swimmers” only, no bathing allowed, between 7am and 5pm on weekdays only, and another access point for them to leave the water and the beach. No lingering, loitering, resting or exercising on the sand. “We are NOT reopening our beaches,” blared the needlessly shouty diktat from Waverley Council on Wednesday morning.

We have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. But it could have been weirder still. When Waverley Council decided, at a meeting on Tuesday evening, to provide limited access to the ocean, two Liberal councillors suggested controlling citizens with a registration system at Bondi. One suggested that swimmers register their desire to swim, so council could stagger swimming across the day at allotted times. Book online, pick a time, follow the signs to the access point guarded by rangers, and then swim in the jewel sea. Who will blow the whistle when time’s up?

Absurdly, another Liberal councillor agreed, arguing it would be awful to see TV images of “a wartime queue of people waiting to get in the water”. Was she worried about TV images or the queues?

What a muddle Waverley Council has got itself into by rushing to close down Bondi Beach. These are confusing times when Liberals are more controlling than Labor or Greens councillors. To her credit, deputy mayor Elaine Keenan, a Greens councillor, said she was concerned that Waverley was much more restrictive than other councils that allowed people to walk and jog on newly opened beaches. She pointed out that none of the public health orders agreed by the national cabinet prohibited exercising on the beach. Nor could the council prevent access to the water, she said, adding that rangers did not have power to demand that people get out of the water.

Mayor Paula Masselos wouldn’t budge. The beaches would remain closed with “very strict measures” to provide limited access to the sea from April 28, she said, coinciding with the end of school holidays in NSW and cooler weather. Except that kids won’t be back in the classroom and the ocean has a magnetic pull for home-schooled kids and adults working from home, especially given Sydney’s weather will likely remain superb in coming weeks. Add in pent-up demand from the lockdown, and next week might be messy at our iconic Bondi Beach.

Waverley Council has issued another diktat too: the council will close all access if they can’t handle the situation. So, we are heading back to square one, councils refusing to do what they could have done from the start. Popular beaches could have been managed in the same way as popular parks nearby, rangers patrolling them, dispersing groups, calling in police to fine troublemakers.

If oceans are fenced off again from Australians, there may be more civil disobedience than a few quiet rebels at Clovelly.

Margaret Silva has been at Bronte every morning, really, really, early for the past 33 years. At least, she was in the period BC – before coronavirus. The feisty something-year-old — she won’t reveal her age — was in the water by 5am, swimming 10 laps in the ocean pool carved into the sandstone cliffs at Bronte. Then to the gym by 6am.

It was an impressive regimen, topped off by a bit of social banter with other early risers such Leonie Colwell. Another Bronte regular in the period BC, Colwell was usually in the water by 4.30am.

And then both women, along with many other early morning swimmers, were caught up in a fevered panic after throngs of local sunseekers and backpackers sat on Bondi Beach one sunny day late last month.

Inviting cameras around him, NSW Police Minister David Elliott called for councils to limit their open spaces to no more than 500 people in line with a decision made by the national cabinet. It was a media stunt designed to scare the living daylights out of people, something the Berejiklian government has done a lot of in NSW.

“If the community does not comply with the regulations and the health warnings, this is going to become the new norm,” the Police Minister said. “We are going to close down the type of activities we’ve grown to love.”

The state and federal governments set the tone for draconian, often hysterical and nonsensical, rules. No sitting on park benches. No slouching alone under a tree with a book. If kids sit down after kicking the ball, they are told to move on by police. No golf if you’re a Victorian because Premier Daniel Andrews says no one “needs” to play golf.

No wonder some local councils grabbed their biggest stick too, closing beaches, erecting 2m-high fences with signs warning people of penalties for stepping on a beach. The eastern suburbs of Sydney, like other areas across Australia, resemble a police state.

It is especially dumb and draconian to stop Australians from exercising on our beaches and from swimming in our vast oceans too.

“They should have let us swim early, and not hang around,” says Silva. “I would’ve been quite happy with that because I can tell you there’s never a crowd at 4.30!”

Colwell is disappointed that swimming, as a safe form of exercise, has been taken from older people. “Health for elderly citizens is everything,” she says. She points to the legions of surfers in the ocean, young and fit enough to jump fences and clamber over rocks to reach the ocean. “It’s great that they can do that, you can see it’s safe. Older people just want to go down to the beach for a quick swim, have their exercise and go home, because swimming in the ocean is a healthy thing to do.”

The closure of Bondi Beach has become a symbol of the national lockdown, replete with confused messages. For example, exercising alone on a local beach closed by the council is not a breach of any public health order; it won’t attract a $1000-plus fine. It is trespass at most; ignoring a sign is a local government offence, more akin to a $100 parking fine. But not all police have understood the difference, making overbearing threats, adding to the mayhem on our beaches.

Police marched on to Bronte Beach over the Easter weekend, megaphones at the ready, shouting “surfers, you must come to the beach”. Except that there is no law, no public health order, not even a piddling regulation that makes it illegal for people to be in the ocean.

Just as the very public closure of Bondi became a symbol of the national lockdown of the economy, the reopening of this 1km stretch of sparkling coastline with one-way in/out corridors is a microcosm of the bigger mess we face reopening the rest of the country. It is a lesson about exercising power during an emergency, choosing a big stick over something less draconian, done with the best of intentions but creating a wave of unplanned, messy and costly problems. It is easy to shut down a beach — and an economy — but it is much harder to get us back to where we were.

Local, state and federal governments will not likely be punished for overreacting in the early, crazy stages of the COVID-19 panic. But with the curve flattening, and now dropping, with hospitals virtually empty, all governments will be punished unless they quickly remove the ridiculous rules and then start reopening the country.

This week the national cabinet said some elective surgery could restart in hospitals full of empty beds. As The Australian’s David Penberthy quipped on Twitter, “call me old-fashioned, but I was hoping that when restrictions started to lift I could have dinner for two as opposed to a colonoscopy”. What’s next? When? Every tick of the clock means another business closes down, more jobs lost, people’s futures trashed. Every day out of the classroom will mean more kids leaving school forever, joining the ranks of the lowly paid with little prospect of advancement. Every new week of lockdown will cause more despair, depression, violence hidden behind closed doors.

Maybe naive local councillors imagined some symmetry between the ease of closing down beaches and opening them up again. But the dilemma of asymmetry is one that state and federal governments should have understood better. What is easy to shut down, and wreck, is more difficult to reopen, and rebuild.