Rural ports in storm but it can be a struggle to keep the lights on

COVID-19 becomes a two-tiered health crisis, with mainland rural communities largely spared.

Colleen Guiney in Port Fairy, Victoria, where she runs luxury accommodation business Drift House with her partner John Watkinson. Picture: Aaron Francis

Colleen Guiney is on the right side of the great Australian corona­virus divide.

For Guiney and millions of others living outside the major cities, COVID-19 has become a two-tiered health crisis, with mainland rural communities largely spared.

Since the virus came to Australia, there has been just one case in the Moyne Shire, which runs for 5481sq km in western Victoria, and Guiney and partner John Watkinson have been quietly waiting for the reopening of the economy.

Their luxury accommodation business, Drift House, is coming to life again in Port Fairy as the Victorian government lifts travel ­restrictions amid expectations the city-based virus is looking increasingly under control, even if risks of outbreaks remain.

“The town has coped really well. Winter is usually our low season, but we’ve got a good start to it, which is really positive,’’ Guiney says. “We feel quite removed from what’s been going on.’’

The disease maps along Australia’s eastern seaboard are showing virtual clean sheets in many rural areas.

It’s left country people with the knowledge that they have very ­little chance of contracting the coronavirus. Yet the economic impacts and social disruptions have been real, with friends and relatives separated, and businesses — tourism in particular — smashed by the national shutdown.

Dan Tehan, the federal member for Wannon, which includes Port Fairy nearly 300km southwest of Melbourne, said the tourism and hospitality sectors had been battered by the virus.

“We need to be doing everything we can to support the sector at this time,’’ he says.

“I think we will see a boom in domestic tourism if people are ­allowed to explore all these ­wonderful places in Australia.’’ The Victorian and NSW COVID-19 maps provide clear ­evidence of how limited the disease has been in rural areas in the two most populous states.

Late this week, virtually every active case in Victoria was within Melbourne or close by, leaving a blank, disease-free map over most of the state.

The story is similar in NSW, where the virus has largely left its mark only on Sydney.

In Queensland, it remains a city-centric problem, with 869 of the 1059 confirmed cases in Brisbane, the Gold Coast or on the Sunshine Coast.

While Guiney has been able to take her oldest child surfing after school, Moyne Shire mayor ­Daniel Meade has been working on his dairy farm, also safe in the knowledge that the virus would be doing him no harm.

Meade wants to see people ­return to tourist towns like Port Fairy to help shore up the local economies, although acknowledging there is understandable reticence among some people about the spectre of the virus being ­imported into regional Australia from the cities.

“We’re keen to see people come back as soon as it is safe and it’s possible. We’d encourage them back,’’ he said.

“We need to get the businesses back up and firing.’’