Taking refuge from COVID-19 in the world’s most isolated city
Almost six weeks ago, just before the lockdown measures to contain COVID-19 clamped down on travel in Australia, I was due to fly to Tasmania with Liam. He was supposed to come to Sydney on the Thursday and our flight out to the most southerly state in Australia was scheduled two days after. The Australian government had already advised against travelling internationally, but state borders within the country had remained open. I was already working from home because our office in Sydney had closed down in protection of our employees. At lunchtime that Thursday, we received the news that state borders for Tasmania were closing as of midnight Friday. Knowing that the rest of the country might not be far away from closing down its borders too, I just cancelled everything we had booked in Tasmania and booked a flight to Perth instead. Less than 12 hours later, I was on my way to the world’s most isolated city.
I work as a Marketing Manager in Sydney, and events are usually a big part of my job. With those no longer happening for the near future, and me working from home anyway, there wasn’t really a need for me to be in Sydney for the time being. Besides, Perth is a much smaller city than Sydney and there is A LOT of space in Western Australia, so there were naturally fewer cases all along.
The first weekend, life was almost normal albeit quieter than normal. We made it out to the Swan Valley, a wine region about a 20 minutes’ drive from the Perth metropolitan area, to check out a few of the wineries and local produce. Read more about another visit to the Swan Valley in this post.
During the week, I was flat out busy working as we had to redo our entire marketing plan, much of which was based on events and direct mailers – but there really isn’t much use sending postal mailers to people that aren’t in the office and events are no longer happening for now. In the evenings, I tried to get out as much as possible, especially thinking that outdoor activities might get further restricted and with winter approaching fast. Hence, we got as many bike rides, walks and beach time under our belts as possible.
It didn’t take me long to realise how lucky I had been with the decision to fly to Perth on a whim. My workmate Barry used to joke that there is just too much infrastructure in Perth (because it’s such a wide-spread place for a relatively small amount of people), but this fact really comes in handy when there is a pandemic. The sheer amount of beach space means that we can always find a spot that isn’t too busy after an evening bike ride along the coast, with the sun setting over the ocean.
We even managed to squeeze in an amazing camping trip down to Belvidere Campground, just under two hours from Perth, before regional travel within the state of Western Australia was banned. We were only one of three other camping parties on this remote campsite, which faces a lake on the one side and the sea on the other. It turned out that we had actually made it there just in time because the regional travel ban was in force the day after we got back from our camping weekend and this ban has not been lifted yet. Read more about our trip to Belvidere Campground here.
Even with regional travel bans in place, so far throughout the COVID-19 crisis we have always been allowed outside with the people living in one’s household, or for exercise. We did a lot of really fantastic hikes but more on that in another post. I also had to adjust to working from home full time, as did many other people that were lucky enough to keep their jobs, but again, I’ll save this for another time. I cannot say how truly grateful I am that I made it out here. I was incredibly sad that I couldn’t fly back home to Germany as planned in April, and I really miss my family, but aside from that, I really couldn’t be anywhere better in this sad situation and I hope that everyone is keeping well and safe out there.
