Coronavirus: Melbourne is down but not out

Melbourne’s empty Emporium shopping centre on August 12.

At some stage, it seems, every city experiences adversity. This is most certainly the case in Australia. Bushfires, droughts, floods and even cyclones have at times terrorised whole communities. Like a cork tossed in stormy seas we are occasionally pulled under – yet invariably we bob up, winded, bruised, tearful even, but all the more determined to rebuild our place in this glorious and terrifying land.

Darwin recovered from Cyclone Tracy in 1974. Sydney was terrorised in May 1942 when Japanese submarines penetrated the harbour. Adelaide lost its state bank in the last recession. Brisbane flooded badly in 2011. But each of these adversities seemed to be part of a universal deal with fate or God or Gaia. We were at war, or it was a freak event of nature, or it was caused by circumstances mostly outside our control. The same logic applies with bushfire, drought and cyclone. Disasters happen.

This time it is Melbourne’s turn for adversity – and while we feel the love, the concern and the support of our fellow Australians, the pain and the burden must be borne by us alone. The streets are empty. The shops are shuttered. The bike paths and the walking trails are crowded with masked strangers keeping their distance because of the invisible threat of contagion. There is no chat, or laughter, in public places. The city’s cafes, bars and mighty sporting arenas are all silenced.

Melbourne is a proud city built upon a legacy of Ballarat gold and raw corporate power. When the headquarters of the nascent mining behemoth BHP left Broken Hill in 1885, the chosen city was Melbourne. Other mining companies followed suit. Banks, Telstra, Australia Post, the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (founded in 1916) as well as an artistic legacy stretching back to the Heidelberg School and to John and Sunday Reed’s Heide all give this city, my city, a gravitas and a healthy dose of self-confidence.

After federation in 1901 Australia’s first parliament was in Melbourne. Barry Humphries’ iconic creation Dame Edna Everage came out of Melbourne, as did Kath & Kim. And while every city has its heroes, the person I would choose for inspiration at this most terrible time is the Melbourne-educated and later resident Edward (Weary) Dunlop, the World War II prisoner-of-war leader of Changi and the Burma Railway. Not so much because of his courage and confidence in getting through adversities and atrocities, but for his capacity to forgive his tormentors after the war.

If every city has a darkest hour, then surely this is Melbourne’s. Not so much because of the scale of the threat, though that is not inconsequential, but rather because I think we feel the burden is largely ours alone to bear. After all, a localised pandemic is hardly part of a contract of shared risk as is bushfire, drought or even war.

In these times it is easy to descend into blame and division. What is needed is the support of the greater Australian community as well as an intrinsic stoicism, a determination to see it through and a culture of helping each other. But something else is required: a post-pandemic future not wracked with recrimination but shaped by good humour, by entrepreneurship, by a sense of fairness and by nation-building. I think we can build an even better Melbourne by harnessing our shared experiences and by creating the businesses, jobs and culture best suited to the needs of the 21st century.

Let not the legacy of this pandemic be rancour; let it be a galvanised community in a brand-new iteration of Marvellous Melbourne.