Letter from Melbourne
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”Dickens was right. We are now living a tale of two cities, of two parts of the country.
One place where COVID is closing in, while the rest of the country cautiously pushes open its doors.
It feels rather frightening to be here in Melbourne. The red line on the graph goes up and up — 270 new infections one day, then 238, then 317, and then yesterday 428 Victorians newly infected with a virus that has taken control of so much of our lives that other experiences seem like an alternate reality. .
Records don’t matter anymore. Each day is a new record figure — I don’t notice.
But I can’t shake the stories of people who have now been told that for reasons of infection control they cannot visit their dying mother in palliative care until she is unconscious and has only 24 hours to live.
And I can’t unhear the anxious voices and teary inquiries of people who don’t know if they have the mental stamina to survive six more weeks away from those they love.
It’s lonely here. The streets are silent again, and while the nation buzzed last time around with chat of craft projects, binge-watching and iso-cooking to make the shared time indoors fun, no-one’s talking about bloody sourdough now.
Shoulders are hunched against the cold and collars are turned against the reality that lives will be lost and that spring will come to our fellow Australians, but it may be without us.
I do not write this to make you feel bad, and I am sorry to be writing again about COVID, but I know that many of us struggling here crave your fellow-feeling, your empathy, but most of all we want your understanding that this too could happen to you.
We are your Cassandra — warning against what may be in the wind.
Virginia Trioli
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