Brisbane, Qld: ‘We’ve learnt to follow orders well’
Queenslanders, compliant? Maybe it’s because we’re still jumpy from all the floods and cyclones.
Across the nation we’re leading vastly different lives as states impose a patchwork of Covid-19 restrictions. On Monday July 19, our writers in every state ventured out to capture a snapshot of their cities and towns – a Covid-eye view of the way we live today.
First, gratitude. Then, perspective. Having to wear a face mask in the supermarket? Having to wear a face mask between sipping four pints while seated at the bar? Up to 30 people still allowed at home? Maybe try complaining about this Brisbane restriction stuff to a Melburnian or a Sydneysider. Just remember to brace for impact. Slight hiccups? Minor setbacks? For most of us, these are brief adjustments. The ripe bananas will be bought, the XXXX Gold will get glugged, and the winter sun will rise again over the good citizens of the Sunshine State.
“We have to wear the mask all the way home on the bus?” my kids sigh.
You know what’s worse than wearing a face mask all the way home on the bus? Wearing a ventilator mask in ICU. You know what’s worse than wearing a ventilator mask in ICU? Earthworms. Big fat slippery earthworms that would love to feast on the buried flesh of Queensland high school girls who can’t bear to wear a face mask for half an hour on the bus.
School drop-off, 8am. Drive past the Surgical, Treatment and Rehabilitation Service (STARS) in Herston, inner-north Brisbane, where I jagged a second Pfizer jab last week. Earnt myself a little orange sticker: I’ve had the Covid-19 Vaccination. The sticker’s “V” in “vaccination” was, upon closer inspection, a bright blue tick of approval. I stuck it in my “Trent’s Memories” tub on the storage shelf in the laundry, along with several pre-Covid mementos: the “I-heart-NY” mug, the “I bungee jumped in Queenstown” certificate, my ratty old passports. I’ll show those passports to my grandkids one day: “Once upon a time there was something we called ‘international travel’. We boarded big aeroplanes and flew across vast oceans to exotic places and we wore money belts and bum bags and read passages from Lonely Planet guides to puzzled locals. Our dreams came true this way.”
A giant Australian government billboard stuck to a building on St Pauls Terrace. A man raising his sleeve to reveal a Band-Aid: Arm yourself against Covid-19. Find out when you can get vaccinated.
Across town this morning, Queensland’s chief health officer Jeannette Young fields questions about the 200,000 Queenslanders languishing on the Pfizer vaccine waiting list. The premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has flown the coop, skipped town, done a runner to Tokyo to bring home the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games tucked safely in her bum bag. “We all stand to reap enormous benefits,” she says.
Work meeting in the city. Park in the $15 all-day car park under the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. Lots of spare parks. Lots of people still working from home. Couples in masks making yoga poses on the lawn at the entrance to South Bank. Maskless joggers and cyclists on the riverside track. Hard to spot a person in Queen St Mall not wearing a mask today but there’s the odd knucklehead with his mask inexplicably covering his lips but not his nostrils.
There are 39 active infections in Queensland. No new locally acquired cases since Friday. Maybe we’ve learnt to follow orders well, us Queenslanders. The French would likely scoff at our collective say-jump-how-high compliance, but maybe it’s because we’re still a bit jumpy from all the floods and cyclones that turn up every five or 10 years to remind us we’re only two or three steps away from the high-pressure hose and the insurance office.
Restaurants and cafes are open so I catch up over lunch with a friend who is a succession lawyer. She says the wills and estates industry has never been busier. Everyone’s planning for the worst. But these are lean times for a few local funeral businesses, she adds. Everybody washing their hands. Anyone with cold and flu symptoms staying home. Not enough people filling coffins to keep these businesses riding the lucrative grave train.
Grab a few groceries in the afternoon. My mission, and I will choose to accept it, is to pick up some milk, some bread, some avocados, some bagels for the girls and a tub of cream cheese. Pass the local GP where eight patients queue outside on chairs. Park the car. Lock the car. Walk five metres before I see someone wearing a face mask. Curse my forgetfulness. Walk five metres back to the car. Unlock the car. Slip on face mask. Lock the car again. Walk to shops. Use the “Check In Qld” app to register my details as I enter the mall.
Text from my wife. Turns out the hotel I rashly booked for a family weekend away – that one I raved about with the rare and remarkable affordability and availability – is temporarily acting as a Covid quarantine hotel. Panic emoji. Confusion emoji.
The supermarket’s avocado bay is beyond the apple bay but between the apple bay and the avocado bay is a man with a wet and throaty cough leaning over the Granny Smiths. Big right-foot step from me, a casual spin to present my back to the coughing man, pretend to take an interest in the Imperial mandarins, then spin again to plant myself in front of the bay of ripe avocados. A classic pandemic supermarket-sniffler evasion. Three large avocados slipped in the shopping basket and my work here is done. Slip the face mask off in the car, hit the accelerator and I’m home free for another day, thanking my lucky stars that my girls will not have to spend one more awful day of this relentless pandemic without having cream cheese and smashed avocado bagels for breakfast.
South-East Queensland is currently in lockdown, due to end on Sunday, August 8.