I moved to Australia last spring, and just got out of lockdown
A long, slow journey to Melbourne was just a prelude to what awaited us
This is a First Person column by Conor McCann, a St. John's journalist and writer currently living in Australia. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.
It's hard some days not to feel like Paul Hogan's titular character in Crocodile Dundee, meandering around New York City in an outback hat and leather vest. While it's not quite the same look, my flannel shirt and wool socks feel just as out of place here in cosmopolitan Melbourne.
Less than six months ago, I was south of Goobies, somewhere near Black River on a weekend bear hunt with my brother, but now, stepping out into the sprawling cityscape of $6 lattes, carefully co-ordinated athleisure wear and a distinct lack of potholes, it feels as if I've only just stepped out of the woods.
That's probably because we're only just now coming out of lockdown.
Earlier this year my partner and I decided to move to Australia amid what was then, arguably, a terrible time to do so. With her aging parents Down Under and a small window for special travel exemptions, we packed up our lives and set out upon a new adventure.
It perhaps goes without saying, but travelling during the age of COVID-19 is an uncomfortable exercise in logistics, hygiene, and maintaining a certain zen about the looming possibility of illness.
Due to that aforementioned small window of travel we missed out on the vaccine rollout in Newfoundland, and with the onset of the delta variant we double-masked and hoped for the best, hopping from St. John's to Montreal, on to Toronto, then Hong Kong, and then — finally — Australia.
After traveling for nearly three days and a mind-numbing jumble of time zones, we arrived in Sydney and settled into our two-week hotel quarantine.
That's not a lockdown
I had made a point of trying not to think about hotel quarantine.
Early in the moving process, we had heard horror stories of spider-infested rooms, paltry rations and — most grimly of all, I thought — two weeks locked in a room without a window.
Regardless of whatever awaited us on the other end I vowed hotel quarantine would not break me.
To my relief our room had a window — a big one, in fact, that overlooked downtown Sydney and from which we could watch the bustling streets below as people went about their unmasked lives.
Sydney, like much of Australia, had at that point been relatively untouched by the pandemic, though the same could not be said for Melbourne.
While we waited out our quarantine, bingeing TV shows and carving out small daily routines, we monitored news reports of a small outbreak, and indications that Victoria was perhaps heading back into another lockdown.
Two weeks and half-a-dozen nasal swabs later, we departed for Melbourne on the last leg of our moving odyssey, content to put the endless stress of COVID concerns behind us.
…THIS is a lockdown
There's something to be said about the best-laid plans, in travelling, in life, and in pandemics.
According to ABC News, Melbourne surpassed Buenos Aires in October to claim the title of most locked-down city in the world, with some 250 days spent in lockdown since the beginning of the pandemic.
Fortunately, we were present for only about 94 of them.
Unlike the lockdowns we had come to know in St. John's, restrictions in Melbourne were more drastic, including an evening curfew and requiring masks to be worn even outdoors.
What initially seemed like a severe response wasn't unwarranted, however, as many of the city's five million residents were growing antsy, having already spent 154 days locked down in 2020, 111 of them consecutively.
It was a sacrifice that, along with tight borders, had bought them considerable freedom and normalcy in the months following, but also reinforced a sense of complacency, one that perhaps contributed to the low vaccination numbers early in the rollout.
Tensions appeared to boil over during a series of protests by anti-vaxxers who, co-opting a trade union dispute over jobsite regulations, spun it into a bizarre, self-styled fight for freedom.
Contrary to the rash of conspiracies that began cropping up shortly thereafter, however, Australia is far from a police state.
A slow return to normal
The road to exiting lockdown was a slow but gradual process, and most of the city's pent-up energy was released once the government allowed picnics, giving people the opportunity to reconnect and spend time outdoors.
At the very least, it made the police-state conspiracies a lot harder to push against the backdrop of the city's Monet-like public parks.
Now things appear to be returning to normal. Horses ran in the Melbourne Cup last week and bars and restaurants are opening up again.
Once more, people can enjoy their expensive coffees indoors which, given the spiders and the heat, the anti-vaxxers, and something called "thunderstorm asthma," was perhaps the best place to be all along.
Not for me, though.
I've been cooped up for too long, and after getting our second doses we're ready to get out and explore a new home which I feel like I've only just arrived in.
If anything, the lockdown has added to that enthusiasm. At the very least, it provided ample time to work through the jet lag.
While Melbourne is a long way from Crocodile Dundee's Walkabout Creek, I won't be trading in my boots for flip-flops any time soon, now that the sweltering summer months are creeping in.
We may have surmounted this pandemic move, but it may take a while longer to shake the lingering fear that there are snakes and spiders lurking behind each patch of tall grass.
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