Coronavirus: Melbourne just isn’t Melbourne right now …
Melbourne’s freeways are all but free of traffic, its famous boulevards empty. Welcome to day one of Stage 4 lockdown.
Melbourne’s freeways are all but free of traffic, its famous boulevards empty.
The stream of cars usually passing under the Tulla’s “cheese stick” on the way to or from the airport had already been reduced to a trickle after the interstate ban on Victorian travellers. Now it’s barely a drip.
Trams shuttle up and down Collins and Bourke streets, stopping more for the lights than for passengers.
Shops are closed, up to 400,000 more Melburnians can’t work, all the schoolkids are back home and everyone has a five-kilometre legal ring fence around their home, enforced with a $1650 fine.
“Permitted workers” must carry around a written document. If they need to put their child in care, they need another.
Those who dare venture out for one of the few “permitted activities” studiously stay out of each other‘s way. Interactions at the supermarket, chemist or post office are perfunctory, words muffled through mandatory face masks. Eyebrows have become the go-to form of communication.
Welcome to day one of stage-four lockdown, Melbourne-style. No one is smiling, not that you can tell. The nation’s most cosmopolitan city has lost its swagger. Instead it is cowering under the sheets as it stays home and looks to ride out a COVID second wave infecting hundreds of people each day.
People are genuinely fearful as they wait by the TV or radio for Premier Daniel Andrews to announce “the number”. They are looking for the start of a downward trend, and with it some hope.
Hope feels a long way away.
Melburnians are scared for their own health, for their immediate families, and family members and friends they can’t visit. COVID infects every conversation.
They worry about their jobs, and the jobs of those they care about. They hear Scott Morrison say this stage-four lockdown will cost the economy $9bn and know that, while the pain will be shared, their state will be hardest hit.
The city seen from above today showed the Shrine of Remembrance deserted, the Tan stripped of runners, the MCG gathering cobwebs. Great works go unseen at the National Gallery of Victoria, great shows unperformed at the Arts Centre.
Melbourne isn’t Melbourne right now. The roads are empty, and the road out long.
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