Country life suffering under city rules

On any given Saturday the sleepy town of Ardrossan wakes to the sound of girls playing club netball and the lads from the primary school footy team kicking the Sherrin.

Cohen Treloar, 9, and Isabelle Teakle, 15, in Ardrossan, South Australia, where Covid restrictions are sapping the vitality from regional life. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

On any given Saturday the sleepy town of Ardrossan wakes to the sound of girls playing club netball at the local courts and the lads from the primary school footy team kicking the Sherrin at their local oval.

In the afternoon, farmers, fishos and town tradies pull on the blue and white guernseys of the mighty Ardrossan Kangaroos and take to their home ground on Maitland Rd, either drowning their sorrows or toasting their greatness in the clubrooms after the game.

This weekend, for the third week running, there was no children’s sport or club sport played in Ardrossan, population just over 1000, a two-hour drive from Adelaide at the northern end of Yorke Peninsula.

Thursday afternoon winter bowls has also been cancelled until further notice and the many social events organised by the Ardrossan Lawn Bowls Club canned due to social-distancing rules. It is the same story for the bowls clubs in Kadina, Wallaroo, and all the other remote towns on the peninsula.

This is what life looks like when a lockdown “ends” with a big asterisk over it.

South Australia is slowly tiptoeing backwards from a blanket seven-day closure with tight restrictions still in place, not just in Adelaide, which has 25 Covid cases, but in tiny towns hundreds of kilometres from the closest infection.

The situation has prompted local MP Fraser Ellis to write to Premier Steven Marshall calling for tiered restrictions in regional SA, saying social cohesion and mental health are being undermined by measures designed to stop outbreaks where none have ever occurred.

“From the contact I am receiving the distress and hardship being experienced by my constituents is very real and is doing great harm to so many people both financially and emotionally,” Mr Ellis wrote.

In Ardrossan itself, life under lockdown was met not so much with anger but world-weary resignation.

The biggest impact has been economic, especially on town businesses that were forced to close, but it is the impact on sport that makes Ardrossan a microcosm of the social impact on country towns that have been caught up in lockdowns Australia-wide.

In a region where sport has always formed the backbone of the community – the first footy matches were played in Ardrossan in 1898 by local farmers wearing wheat bags dyed blue and white – it is the social side of match day that the locals miss most.

“Put it this way, we have to be able to play lawn bowls otherwise we don’t have a valid excuse to have a beer,” club president Jim Burgess tells The Australian.

“Sadly we have older members who have lost their partners and for them now living on their own being able to come to the club is their main point of social contact. We understand why we are all in this position with lockdowns, I suppose, but the impact is real. Everybody is very compliant here but we can’t wait for it all to end.

“We lose money into the club because we can’t have the winter bowls program, which goes for 10 or 12 weeks, as there’s been no-one here having a drink. Most importantly we lose time together as a community. It’s bad for all of us old guys who see this club as our social mecca.”

At the other end of the age bracket are netballer Isabelle Teakle and footballer Cohen Treloar.

“I miss the social aspect with friends, going up against the other clubs, and I also just miss playing sport,” Isabelle says.

“Same,” says Cohen. “It’s a bit annoying as I don’t get to see my friends much.”

An urgent Zoom meeting was held on Friday so that the Ardrossan Kangaroos and the eight other teams comprising the Yorke Peninsula Football League – Bute, Kadina, CMS Crows, Paskeville, South Eagles, CY Cougars, Kadina and Wallaroo – can work out how to save the pending finals from the ruins of the 2021 season.

“I can see what the government is trying to do. It is what it is, but it’s still annoying. For us the footy is all about socialising after the game,” Ardrossan Kangaroos president Greg Ware said.

“We miss being able to get together. It’s really unfortunate for the younger kids because you always want to see them out there having a kick.”

It was announced this week after the SA lockdown ended that club and community sports training could resume, but matches remain banned pending another round of deliberations by the State’s Covid Transition Committee early next week.

The Premier said last week that he was mindful of the impact restrictions were having on regional areas.

He said the committee had considered whether the restrictions could be lifted more swiftly in rural areas but decided to take a uniform approach. “We have gone into this as a state and we will come out of it as a state,” he said.