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My first experience with the COVID-19 lockdown was on March 23, 9.30 am, one day after the national lockdown was declared. This was not an experience I had planned for myself, but one which will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I’d made a hairdressing appointment with my Bondi Junction salon for a ‘coronavirus’ hair cut, i.e. one that would last for many weeks. Because of my age I avoided using public transport and walked the three kms up Bondi Road to my destination. Not catching the bus had me meandering down back streets, where I turned into Hollywood Avenue. And this is where my unscheduled experience began. A human trail had started to form outside Centrelink. I walked beside it as it snaked around into Ebley Street.
I have no words for my emotions as I continued to walk in horror alongside this trail of lives disrupted, confused, perhaps despairing. Finally the queue had to take a turn into the Ann Street Dock, otherwise it would have merged with the one that had started to form from Bronte Road for Service NSW.
In my lockdown I have been hovering over the televised news, just as my grandmothers, mother and aunts would have huddled around the radio during the Second World War. But the televised images of those nationwide Centrelink queues are blurred shadows compared to my real life experience of walking beside the Bondi Junction queue from Hollywood Avenue, down Ebley Street and into the Ann Street Dock, an experience which still chokes me with emotion as I write this.
I’d made a hairdressing appointment with my Bondi Junction salon for a ‘coronavirus’ hair cut, i.e. one that would last for many weeks. Because of my age I avoided using public transport and walked the three kms up Bondi Road to my destination. Not catching the bus had me meandering down back streets, where I turned into Hollywood Avenue. And this is where my unscheduled experience began. A human trail had started to form outside Centrelink. I walked beside it as it snaked around into Ebley Street.
I have no words for my emotions as I continued to walk in horror alongside this trail of lives disrupted, confused, perhaps despairing. Finally the queue had to take a turn into the Ann Street Dock, otherwise it would have merged with the one that had started to form from Bronte Road for Service NSW.
In my lockdown I have been hovering over the televised news, just as my grandmothers, mother and aunts would have huddled around the radio during the Second World War. But the televised images of those nationwide Centrelink queues are blurred shadows compared to my real life experience of walking beside the Bondi Junction queue from Hollywood Avenue, down Ebley Street and into the Ann Street Dock, an experience which still chokes me with emotion as I write this.