This was published 2 years ago
Opinion
We’ll hate you, Sydney, post-lockdown: you never felt Melbourne’s pain, you shrugged yours off, you did it better
Kate Halfpenny
Regular columnistI feel a waft of PTSD typing this, but my way of coping with Melbourne’s long lockdown last winter was to run the three kilometres from my Collingwood place into the city each weekday by 6am.
When I say run, I mean stagger. Picture a middle-aged asthmatic peeling off polar fleece layers between Foo Fighters songs, eyes leaking from the cold and the effort. Not pretty, but on a mission.
Lockdown comes to an end at Melbourne’s Captain Melville pub on Friday. Credit: Luis Ascui
At the top of Spring and Bourke streets, I’d yell into the emptiness: “We’re still here. We’re coming back to you.” My little mantra. It was probably whacky, but I wanted to let my beautiful Melbourne know its humans hadn’t abandoned it forever. That we weren’t doing it by choice. That better days were ahead.
And now, those better days are here. Sort of. With the 70 per cent double-vaxxed target hit and 80 just days away, Melbourne is having a gentle reawakening after 18 months of lockdowns.
It might be even more than that. My ability to tell time and place has drained away slowly, without the usual marker flags – holidays, weddings – planted in the ground to give perspective about when something happened.
When Melbourne first went into lockdown, my eldest son had just turned 27. I gave him a new pair of RM Williams boots. I’ve never seen him wear them – I’ve only seen him eight times since then in person and soon he’ll be 29.
My middle child moved in with his girlfriend four days before lockdown. I’ve never had dinner at their place. My daughter has just wrapped up her double uni degree without me there to make casseroles or tell her she’s amazing. Everyone has missed so much.
Which is why Melbourne’s liberation from the world’s longest lockdown, from shuttered shops and fear, feels bittersweet. It sounds dramatic but having been shoved in and out of lockdowns six times, people are a little reluctant to truly celebrate. It’s less that fabulous anticipatory feeling of starting a holiday and more the one you get coming home, when you know you have all the laundry and bills to deal with.
Top of my Opening Up list: seeing the kids – I moved to the beach and can’t visit Melbourne yet, which makes me want to scream – having mum and dad over for a drink, getting to Canberra to see my Botox guru. And from Canberra, I’ll probably zip up to Sydney to reunite with friends and act as an unofficial ambassador tasked with explaining why Melburnians might hate you all for a little while. Why our social media might be filled with anti-Sydney sentiment.
I wish I could come up with non-medical analogies, but I’ve been pushed to the limit by planning what to wear out to dinner – yes! – tonight. Basically, we think you don’t feel our pain. We think your lockdowns were paltry. Like you weren’t even trying. We had two winters, curfews, a fake summer. Even Valentine’s Day got scuppered in the one year everyone probably needed its sentiment. Sydney seemed to dally with the whole thing then shrug it off.
It’s like when someone with a light cold tells you they have the flu. And you’re thinking, “I’ll give you flu. When I had it I couldn’t get out of bed to get water. I was sweaty. I was aching, hallucinating. Not the same thing.”
The first day of your lockdown, I had two Sydney clients cancel at the last minute. One was sobbing about what lay ahead. I felt like crying too. Jesus, get a grip, lady. We’ve been working in lockdown for a year.
Also – and this will make me sound like I’m 15 and writing with my pink glitter pen – we’re jealous of Sydney. And not in the stupid traditional rivals way.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m jealous that for most of your pandemic you had a premier who wasn’t an angry dad. Yours explained. Ours lectured and hectored when we dared to say please sir, show us the health advice behind curfews.
Watching you from afar was a jealousy rollercoaster. First we were jealous of your 2020 freedoms, then horrified by your case numbers. Then we were back to jealousy as you put it behind while we still queued for shots.
So, be patient with Melburnians. We know resentment doesn’t become us. In five to eight years we’ll be ready to stop telling you we did it harder. That your war was different to ours. That we forgive you for doing it better.