Best Coast? A WAxit from Normal Life - For Now
I could see the dread setting in before I heard the news. With the sun high in the sky on Sunday, and hundreds playing, carefree, on Perth’s Cottesloe Beach, I spotted the first one. It was a Dad, about 40, shirtless, and wrangling two kids, lifted his phone speaker to his ear. His face wrinkles.
Next a woman lying near me on the grass, sun-baking, suspends a flurry of texting to do the same, and grows perceptively tenser. And then a teenager peels off from her boisterous gaggle of friends to tune in. (“Ssssh! Hey shut! I’m trying to listen! It’s about the covid thing..”)
Watching their faces, my heart sank, because it confirmed the rumours: Perth, after eight months of - sometimes haughty - normal life amid a global pandemic, was re-entering lockdown. An extremely infectious coronavirus strain had leaked out of hotel quarantine via a security guard late last week. It’s a familiar story - but now it’s Western Australia’s turn to suffer. The remedy - or perhaps the sentence - announced by the premier was a “short, sharp” five-day lockdown: non-essential travel banned, schools closed, masks mandatory outdoors. To stay at home “until we get on top of this.” My wife and I responded to the grim tidings the only sensible way: by walking to the pub for beers, fish and chips, and gelato. Because who knows when we’ll enjoy such basic liberties again?
Here’s the rub: it almost certainly will not be just five days of isolation. Adelaide got an early mark last year, but only because patient zero lied, meaning he was far less infectious than assumed. Sydney’s lockdown was more like three weeks, and ruined Christmas. And Melbourne’s hotel quarantine failures resulted in a 111-day nightmare. I hope this proves pessimistic. After all, it’s accurate - albeit self-pitying - to complain: but we only moved here last week! Wasn’t Perth supposed to be safe?? But also: the smugness with which West Australians rallied around the premier’s strict hard border closure for so many months, acting as if Covid was an “east coast” and not a national problem. And now this.. The smugness continued today in the West Australian newspaper - the flag-bearer of parochial pride - in praising Perthlings for “doing the right thing... in stark contrast to Sydneysiders during their Christmas holiday cluster.”
The paper’s parochial spin aside, it does bode well for getting out of this disaster: people seem to follow the rules. And after moving from Darwin, there does seem to be a lot of rules to follow.
So I guess there’s nothing I can do except cool my itchy feet, and get comfortable in this studio flat for the next few days. The exploring can wait.














