WESTERN AUSTRALIA

DANIELLE WOOD SCHOOL HOUSE 2004-2009

PERTH – AUGUST 2020

All states within Australia differed in their approach and lengths of lockdown. Here in Perth the initial stages of lockdown meant you could only leave the house for work or exercise. Restaurants closed except for take away, school, university, and was, if possible, all completed from home. Lockdown was later eased to allow gatherings of ten people, then 20 and so on, over the course of about four months.

Currently, in my State, there are still minor restrictions such as two square meter spacing rules between people, and a hard boarder from the rest of Australia and the world, and our sports stadium allowed a reduced capacity of 30,000. Western Australia hasn’t had any community transmission in months, but we are having one or two new cases here and there from overseas/interstate travellers who are in mandatory two week quarantine in hotels as soon as they arrive.

Western Australia was not too badly hit, most cases came from International ships docking at our port (over 100 cases), or incoming international flights.

My state government did an excellent job, they shut the borders and made the decision early reducing community spread. Lots of Covid-19 testing centres were opened. Australia wide, there was an additional job ‘seeker’ payment of 550 dollars a fortnight added to the existing unemployment payment – to prevent people from feeling the need to go to work to put food on the table even if they were sick. There was also a job ‘keeper’ payment of 1100 dollars a fortnight per employee given to businesses to continue paying employees even if they had to close or amend their work practices. All in all, it was an expensive exercise, but worth it for the safety of all.

The staged lockdown was minimally invasive. I just worked from home for a few months, and kept my outings to a minimum. I’ve never really done that for a long period before, but it was a refreshing 21st century way of looking at how work could be managed remotely. The ‘stay home’ message was given as advice, and you had to have a good reason (work/exercise/medical appointments etc) to leave the house.

I struggled not seeing my elderly grandparents, missing birthdays, barbecues, social engagements and not being able to hug family members or friends. Not being able to touch my face!! Gosh, who knew how hard that would turn out to be!

I believe ‘normal’ will be redefined, six months ago it was common for someone to blow on a cake and everyone eat a piece, now I couldn’t imagine doing that. Personally, I am definitely going to be more cautious with how I conduct myself in public in relation to hand sanitisation, being more aware of personal space on public transport, and international travel such as cruise ships. I think the way in which we conduct ourselves (with strangers specifically) and how we action our work will differ forever due to Covid-19, and that may not be such a bad thing. I believe it forced businesses to think proactively, and has taken some workplaces out of the stone-and-chisel era of work.

I just hope no OM’s lost their life or suffered because of this terrible virus. I also hope that those around the world are, like Australia, seeing the end of community spread of Covid-19.