By Matt Jowett

This story is part of the My Corona series. We’re publishing personal stories about life in the pandemic, the challenges of lockdowns and building back fairer. 

I can’t help but feel a sharp sense of existential dread and loss whenever someone asks, “So, what do you do for work?”

When COVID-19 decimated the events industry in 2020 – an industry in which I had worked for 15 years – I had contracts lined up with Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Pro Bono Australia, Live Nation and Crown Melbourne, and even with an NGO that took me to the UN Headquarters in New York. I’d recently worked on tours for Adele and Coldplay. I was truly hitting my career stride.

All that disappeared over a period of two months. I lost contracts worth tens of thousands of dollars, representing my ability to pay my bills and credit cards, pay down my HECS, contribute to my retirement and keep a roof over my head.

As the federal and state governments dragged their feet on announcing financial support – and other measures around evictions, utility relief and mental health access – my only option was to withdraw money from my super. I lost around a third of it in tax, as this was just weeks before the COVID policy of tax-free early super access was announced.

I never had much super to begin with, having spent years working mostly casual and freelance jobs, and what I withdrew was a majority of the money that should have been gathering interest for my retirement. I shudder to think how much that loss represents, and how far back it will set my retirement age – but it wasn’t so much a choice as a necessity.

In April 2020, once a policy agenda for support was in place, I attempted to access JobKeeper. As a sole trader I found the application process very confusing and, after failing to gain access to it, like many Australians I landed in line at Centrelink for JobSeeker. At that point I thought little of it – with the Coronavirus Supplement in place it was a similar level of support anyway. I would later learn that being a ‘welfare recipient’ would place major limits on my options and compound the pandemic’s impacts.

With so many barriers to returning to work in events, or any industry at that point, I felt the need to go back to uni and reskill. I shifted to Youth Allowance, just as that payment halved with the end of the Coronavirus Supplement – as if Coronavirus itself had ended. 

I had access to the State Government’s Utility Relief Grant Scheme, and micro grants from NGOs like Support Act helped get me through. In late 2020 I managed to get a few days a week of casual work at a local footwear retail store. All these combined bits of income were still not enough to make ends meet, but they kept the rent paid. I even got approached in 2021 with an event contract to deliver a small event in October; the first time I’d had an offer of event work since early 2020.

This brings me to the situation we’re in now. If 2020 was characterised by a sentiment of unity and support – ‘we’re all in this together’ – 2021 has been the year the crisis continued but the support, largely, did not.

As COVID-19 came back with a mutated vengeance, and with it the necessary lockdowns and restrictions, the Coronavirus Supplement did not return for social security recipients and nor did the JobKeeper program. Instead, a range of one-off disaster support payments have been announced, but for millions of Australians in my position of surviving on a mix of paid work and partial social security payments these schemes were not available, despite losing work.

As retail shut down, and that new contract decided it was too risky and cancelled, I found myself struggling through Victoria’s fourth and fifth lockdowns on around $600 a fortnight – barely enough to cover rent and about half my average income when I’d been working. I was constantly frustrated to find I was locked out of federal and state assistance while adhering to state lockdowns that kept me from work.

I understand the need for these public health measures, and am generally very supportive of them. What I don’t understand is setting the 2021 JobSeeker rate – $630 a fortnight – at around half that of 2020 – $1,200 a fortnight – and excluding those struggling to survive on it from any other support while lockdowns and other restrictions are an ongoing feature of our lives.

If 2020 was characterised by a sentiment of unity and support – ‘we’re all in this together’ – 2021 has been the year the crisis continued but the support, largely, did not.

I regularly have to put off paying bills so I can eat, and I go weeks eating no-name two-minute noodles or 90-cent tins of tuna with a small bowl of rice. I postpone repairs to items or vet check-ups for my pets, I’ve cancelled much-needed psychology and dental appointments to ensure I can pay rent. I cancelled any subscription or membership I could. Without a gym membership and with a drastically reduced grocery budget my health is not what it used to be. Outside of lockdowns I politely decline friends’ invitations to social gatherings if there’s any kind of cost, and feel ashamed to admit it’s because I can’t afford it.  

On recently announcing the return of some of the financial support that had been removed, Scott Morrison said, “The priority is to ensure we’re there to support those that need that help … this is the task, we will come through this lockdown … and on the other side we come back strongly, that’s what we saw last year.”

To that I say: Look a little harder. As someone on a welfare payment I have not been eligible for the lockdown support payments that were supposedly for “anyone who lost income and hours”.

And much of the support that has been temporarily reinstated is only for NSW. Where is it for the rest of us, for the rest of 2021? Where was it for Victoria’s almost back-to-back fourth and fifth lockdowns?

Now in our sixth lockdown, I’ve yet again lost casual work. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to access disaster payments or not. It has sent me into an awfully dark head space.

I don’t know how people in similar positions to mine, here at the bottom of the rungs – the casuals, students, those with disability or on single parent payments – will ever recover their losses.

I’m 34 years old, I’ve left a career built over 15 years in an industry that will take years to return to its previous scale, I’m back in university restricting my availability for work, I have next to nothing left in my superannuation. I am broke, stressed, worried, defeated, anxious, and physically sick from it all. 

The future for me looks, frankly, bloody grim. 

By Connie Jones

This story is part of the My Corona series. We’re publishing personal stories about the pandemic, life in and after lockdown, and Victorians’ hopes and fears for the future. We have changed Connie’s name at her request. 

For a lot of people what’s gotten them through lockdown is knowing that it will end. But for some of us, this is life and it does not end.

I’ve had chronic illness for a long time. When I look back I can’t identify a point in my life when I didn’t have pain and fatigue, although it wasn’t until I was in my late twenties that I realised being in pain all the time wasn’t actually normal.

I’ve got a beautiful wife, Sara – we’ve been together since we were 21 – and we have a little kid, Alex, who’s eight. They’re my reason for everything, my reason to get up in the morning.

I’ve been a teacher for most of my professional life, although my health has interfered with that a lot. I used to be a secondary teacher but I had to take some time away from it, although I was still writing educational resources and creating educational videos.

For the last two years I’ve been doing my masters of primary teaching. I’m really passionate about education, but I have a lot of anxiety about whether I’m going to be able to physically do what’s required of me to pursue that career. Teaching is a job that takes all of you, and all of me is not enough sometimes, with all of the health stuff that goes along with it.

When you’re sick all the time and in pain all the time, it’s really hard to not be depressed and anxious all the time. The thing I find the most challenging is the mental health side of dealing with chronic physical illness.

It’s not linear. Some days I’m at peace with it and other days I’m really mad about it.

All of that emotional stuff, I think a lot of people were feeling that in the pandemic. People were realising Oh, I can’t do my job, I don’t have the things in my life that give me purpose and my sense of identity and my sense of connection with the world.

All of those things that make us human – a lot of people have found how depersonalising and anxiety-creating it is to not have that stuff.

I’m hoping that having been in lockdown will give people a bit of personal experience, a way to understand what it’s like for people with disabilities – how we live all the time. And that for some people it will create empathy. That’s what I’m hoping and what other people I know who are either disabled or love someone who’s disabled are hoping.

I think for a lot of people what’s gotten them through lockdown is knowing that it will end. Knowing we just have to get to a certain number of cases or we just have to get to November and this will be over and it will be okay. That’s the only thing that’s been getting them through without going insane.

For some of us, this is life and it doesn’t end.

At the moment my health is declining and I’m not leaving the house very much, while other people are going back out into the world.

I’m feeling a little bit like I had all these people with me in lockdown – I had my family with me in a very literal sense, but I had my friends with me in a figurative sense. We were kind of all in it together for the first time ever. And now everyone’s going back to their lives and I’m feeling quite alone again in a way that’s adding another layer to the mental health challenges.

I’m quite comfortable with dissonant emotions coexisting. I’m really happy for my friends who run small businesses and for my kid who gets to go back to school. I’m genuinely one hundred per cent thrilled for them.

But sitting right next to that is that sense of being sad that I’m by myself again. And that I’m feeling left behind. I don’t think those two things are mutually exclusive.

I was talking to my wife about my health. She said I don’t seem physically worse to her, and I explained that’s because for the last few months I haven’t had to go anywhere – my life has been entirely at home, contained and controllable and manageable. I haven’t had to go to the supermarket, which sometimes is all I can manage in a three-day period. I haven’t had to go to campus for uni; I haven’t had to navigate moving through the world, and that’s a huge part of what makes my life hard.

She had a bit of an aha moment, she was like, Oh, oh I see. And it’s funny because she knows the intricacies of my health situation; she often knows what I need better than I do. I think it goes to show that when you’re living that embodied experience of disability, the world really does look so different to you. And it’s very hard to communicate that to other people.

sitting right next to that is that sense of being sad that I’m by myself again. And that I’m feeling left behind.

I’m sad that everyone had to experience lockdown. I know that there’ll be long-term mental health and anxiety issues that people will have to process, so I’m not happy that it happened.

But I hope that people can take those negative experiences and think, some people have to live like this all the time and I now have a greater insight into how hard that is. So the next time they vote, or read an opinion piece about the NDIS, or do anything related to people with disabilities, I hope they’ll have a new insight into what we might need. And the world might become a little bit more compassionate.

By Miray Yilmaz

This story is part of the My Corona series. We’re publishing personal stories about the pandemic, life in isolation and Victorians’ hopes and fears for the future. We have changed Miray’s name at her request. 

I’m a 21-year-old uni student, studying a double degree in law and global studies.

I definitely feel a big generational divide, and I feel like our experiences of the world are very different to our parents’ ones. In some ways better, but in a lot of ways worse.

There’s a lot more uncertainty. I feel like the times of being able to plan out your career and know that you can afford a house one day, those times are over.

And I think it drives a lot of intense competition in our generation, because we know that only a few of us will be able to have those things. Even at uni there’s hostility between students because of the intense competition, and it really takes a toll on your mental health when everybody is like that.

I don’t begrudge anybody for being competitive, it’s a system we’ve been handed down. We know we have to be very competitive to get a job, or even an unpaid internship. I think I’ve done six unpaid internships now, many of them for six months at a time. We have to do that to be able to get a job one day. Unfortunately that’s just the way it is; we do hours and hours of unpaid work to try and one day, hopefully, get paid work.

I live in the city with a housemate, and Coronavirus has impacted me in many ways. It’s been really difficult, particularly with the lack of certainty.

Prior to COVID I was employed by three different organisations that I would do casual work for, and I also did private tutoring.

As soon as COVID contaminated the world I was told by all those organisations that we wouldn’t have work. At that point they said for the next few months, but there hasn’t been any work for the whole year.

And with my tutoring as well – at the start of the year I had 12 students, but a lot of them were very reluctant to do online tutoring, so after Coronavirus I was only able to maintain three of them.

I have a few diagnosed mental illnesses, the most prominent of which is an eating disorder. That coupled with the fact that I haven’t had secure employment has been really stressful. Psychiatrists aren’t covered by mental health care plans and they cost a few hundred dollars a session, so that’s been quite a barrier to accessing mental health help.

And generally Coronavirus has exacerbated my mental illnesses anyway, because of the isolation, and because eating disorders are premised on trying to attain a sense of control over your life. The fact that we’ve had severe restriction on our movement already lends itself to making eating disorders worse.

It feels really sort of paralysing in terms of what I want to do in the future. I feel very stagnant.

I’ve been interested in anything to do with women’s rights advocacy, and prior to this I was doing an internship at a women’s development agency. That got cut short, which was devastating because I’d just started and it was quite a difficult process to get into it. They said it’s been postponed but really it’s been cancelled.

It feels really sort of paralysing in terms of what I want to do in the future. I feel very stagnant.

I have access to youth allowance, which has been really helpful, but there’s a great lack of certainty around when they’ll take it away or how much they’ll decrease it by. When I was getting $1,100 a fortnight I could absolutely live on it, but now that it’s been decreased I’m dipping into the small amount of savings I have. It’s quite stressful.

If it got to the stage where I couldn’t pay rent I think my landlord would just kick me out. As a young person you don’t have that much leverage with your landlord.

I think our generation has a lot to deal with, to be honest. The weight of capitalism, the lack of employment, the amount of our uni fees. Just the fact that we’re paying uni fees, whereas the politicians, a lot of them didn’t even pay for uni.

And on top of that we’ve got climate change. And at the same time traditional media seems to hate young people and depict us as very entitled, whiny, privileged children.

Thankfully so far I’m keeping afloat, but I have a few friends who haven’t been turning their heaters on and haven’t been eating much. I’m very privileged that I haven’t had to do that.

By Namya Bihar

This story is part of the My Corona series. We’re publishing personal stories about the pandemic, life in isolation and Victorians’ hopes and fears for the future. We have changed Namya’s name at her request.  

I’m a single mother who’s been in Australia since 2014.  

My boy is in Grade 7 and my girl is in Grade 1. 

Before the virus I had a part-time job and a casual job. I was a cooking instructor and a sous chef, so I was earning good money and managing all my finances.  

I lost both jobs in March.  

Most people have resources or support from Centrelink to cope in this pandemic, but I’m on a bridging visa. I’m not eligible for JobKeeper or JobSeeker, I don’t have any income from the government.  

One of my jobs was for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, in their catering company. At the start they kept paying me, at a reduced rate, about $600 a fortnight from March until May.  

Then they said no, sorry, we can’t pay you anymore until the catering company comes back. 

It’s very hard to manage. Sometimes we don’t have enough to eat.  

Luckily we have a house, and my landlord knows my situation. He has said it’s okay if we can’t pay now, but we have to pay it all together whenever the pandemic’s finished.  

If my landlord says that we have to pay then I don’t know… Maybe I can ask the council if they can help. Sometimes they provide homeless people with shelter or put them in share houses. It would be very hard with two kids. 

There’s a lot of stress. I’m behind on all the bills. Companies know that everybody’s suffering and they give us extensions. But we sleep in one room and don’t turn on the heaters, we cover up and wear shoes in the house, and whenever there’s sunshine we sit outside. The past couple of weeks it was very, very cold. The children were wrapped in blankets.  

Luckily there is the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, and we receive food from them once a fortnight. We eat what we have, if we only have apples and oranges we survive on that. But it’s not enough for us. Mostly we have one proper meal a day. 

The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre provides food to migrant and refugee families in need.

I found out there is a church that does food parcels, but it’s 6.9 kilometers away. If somebody stops me I can’t afford a $1,500 fine. I’m afraid of that.  

The children are okay. They don’t know what’s going on. They’re pretty happy at home, happy they don’t have to get ready and go in the rain to school.  

The school is very good, they said they could provide me with an iPad for my daughter. They can chat with friends on Zoom on the tablet, and use it for teacher meetings. So that’s good. And the school is helping by not asking for any fees.  

But often it’s hard to make them do school work, they just watch YouTube and play games, which is so stressful for me. The teachers only come on for 15 minutes.  

We have nothing to do at home. Sometimes the kids want to go to the park, they want to go for a walk, but I’m scared to go outside. I tell them no, you will touch something. You will play with somebody. This is not allowed at all.  

It’s like we are in a prison.  

I found out there is a church that does food parcels, but it’s 6.9 kilometers away. If somebody stops me I can’t afford a $1,500 fine. I’m afraid of that.

When the pandemic had just started my friends asked me if I needed any help. I said no, that it should be fine, I would be okay. But I didn’t realise it would go on so long.  

I went to the doctor and they said, Oh, you have a lot of stress. They gave me a referral for a counselor. I don’t want to go to a counselor, but the doctor said she had to give me a referral as a duty of care. So I saw the counselor, but she just talked. There’s nothing she can do.   

I just pray every day that we will be allowed to go outside of the suburb, just to get food. But we have no idea how long this will go on for, no idea when my employer will reopen. We are still in stage four.  

I’ll go to the kitchen now to see what I can make for the children. I have some flour. I want to make something for them to make them happy. At least they can still enjoy their life.  

by Tamara Trinder-Scacco

This story is part of our My Corona series: personal stories about the pandemic, life in isolation and Victorians’ hopes and fears for the future.  

I was born Deaf. All my family are Deaf, my husband and my two daughters too. Ours is a Deaf house.

We can communicate in Auslan and spoken English. We adjust which we use depending on the situation.

I prefer using Auslan because I cannot rely on my hearing. If the person I’m with can’t sign I have to rely 100% on lipreading.

Before COVID-19 we could manage fine. My husband and I had support and my daughters had support at school.

Then COVID-19 happened.

The first lockdown was an interesting experience, some positive and some negative.

For example my younger daughter, who is 10, had an emergency trip to hospital in an ambulance. Before they picked her up I explained that we were Deaf and needed to be able to see their faces to lipread.

Both paramedics had masks on and I was concerned about that.

But they were really good, they stood two meters away and removed their masks to explain things to me so I could lipread. I was grateful.

It was the same on the ambulance ride to the hospital, they would lower their masks to communicate. I was really thankful for that.

When we arrived at hospital they were stricter about wearing masks. We arrived at 3am and I knew it would be tricky to find an Auslan interpreter at that time. Both my daughter and I would need to be able to lipread to understand what was happening.

At first the doctors used written notes to communicate with us. It worked, but it was slow and time was getting on, my daughter was in pain and I was frantic.

A senior doctor realised that passing notes back and forth was too much, and lowered their mask whilst keeping two meters away. The doctor gave me an update on the plan for my daughter. We had to wait for X-rays and blood tests.

It was stressful, we had to wait a long time and I was twiddling my thumbs with no communication. I could see the doctors talking but couldn’t understand what they were saying. It was very isolating.

I could see the doctors talking but couldn’t understand what they were saying. It was very isolating.

Another mostly negative experience is the impact on my two daughters of moving to remote learning.

My older girl is in Year 11 and the younger one is in Year 5. Our experience of remote learning in the first lockdown was not good; in fact it was terrible.

Both girls’ mental health suffered because they didn’t have enough face-to-face access with their teachers.

Like many children who are Deaf or hard of hearing, they found working online using Google Meet exhausting because they had to focus closely on the screen to be able to lipread or read captions.

The children need to be mindful of not trying to rush through their work to get everything done. In the second lockdown I have reminded my girls that they can only do their best and if they don’t get everything done they should accept it and move on. But it’s hard.

For my older daughter, who is doing her VCE, I’m concerned about the impact of remote learning on her marks. I hope it won’t have a long-term impact on her future.

And I really hope that remote learning does not have a long-term impact on the girls’ mental health.

I understand that Stage Four restrictions are limiting what everyone can do, but they have extra impact on me as a Deaf person. For example, it’s a challenge when we need to go shopping. The wider community is generally not aware that if they meet a Deaf person they are allowed to remove their mask so the person can lipread, keeping a two meter distance and replacing their mask when they finish speaking.

I can’t force someone to remove their mask but it challenges me and affects my mental health.

There is some amazing technology available, really brilliant, but because I’ve been using this technology a lot since March it has become completely exhausting.

I use screens for about 12 hours a day: for work, interacting with clients, and personal communication like catching up with family and friends. It’s a challenge for Deaf people, especially when they’re meeting new people online. Sometimes I try to avoid going on social media or talking to anyone during my downtime.

It’s wonderful to have interpreters on the TV for breaking news, but it was not easy to set up. The Deaf community and Deaf organisations had to lobby and advocate for Deaf people to have access to these interpreter services.

We should not have to fight so hard for our basic needs and rights. It is exhausting. It makes me angry. It is a constant battle.

I—along with my immediate family and the wider Deaf community—will have long-term impacts from the COVID-19 situation, especially on our mental health.

Having to find new ways of communicating, navigate constant rule changes and advocate for access to information – these things stay with us for a long time.

As does society’s lack of awareness. My Deaf peers and their families are often abused by the community for not wearing masks when they need to communicate.

I would like to see people be less judgemental. It doesn’t cost anything to be kind.

by Andrew Carman.

This story is part of the My Corona series. We’re publishing personal stories about the pandemic, life in isolation and Victorians’ hopes and fears for the future. We have changed Andrew’s surname at his request.  

The first I knew about it was 4:30pm on Saturday. I got a phone call from a friend wanting to know where I was.

“At home,” I said.

“Do you know you’re in hard lockdown?” he replied.

So I went downstairs and there were coppers everywhere, looked like Critical Incident Response police. I realised, hang on, this doesn’t look good.

I wanted to get my laptop out of my car and a copper threatened me with a fine. In the end he relented, but he followed me to the car and followed me back.

There was no degree of compassion. I mean, there’s no way I could have got into the car and driven away. It was blatantly obvious I had no personal belongings with me, just my keys. I just wanted to get my laptop.

I found out more on the news that night: hard lockdown, you’re not going anywhere. It was very confronting.

I had enough food to get me through for five days. I was probably going to be a bit dicey on vegetables, but I could have lived without them. But I was actually quite worried that it would be extended beyond the five days.

There was a total lack of communication, nobody seemed to know what was going on.

Not even the Salvation Army, who have an office downstairs, were allowed into the building. You couldn’t even go down into the foyer and speak to the them while maintaining a social distance.

I’d been tested for COVID-19 the week before and had the negative result on my phone, which I showed the police. It had come through on the Thursday and I’d been home all day Friday. All I’d done is go to the supermarket on Saturday morning, wearing a face mask the whole time.

But there was this massive overreaction with coppers.  It was contemptuous treatment, a total mistrust.

There was no food delivered until the Monday. I would say a lot of people use shopping as their daily exercise, so they would shop on a daily basis. I wonder how many people had nothing until Monday.

On the Monday we got a box from Foodbank. Most of the stuff was out of date so I just threw it down the rubbish chute.

And then we got a load from Woolworths, a load from Coles and a load from The Smith Family. It was actually overkill because the majority of people in this block are single occupants.

At one stage I ended up with nine litres of milk. Bloody ridiculous.

It was contemptuous treatment, a total mistrust.

There was no knock on the door to tell you when food was delivered. You’d see people walking past through the window and you’d open the door and the stuff would just be there.

There was no communication about testing, they’d just come to your unit. I had them stick it up my snout and out the back of my brain, down my throat, and that was it. It was done on the Tuesday and I got the result on the Thursday. Negative.

The bit that hurt me the most was I couldn’t see my grandchildren.  But I became resigned to it. I thought; Five days, I’ve got to cop this.

About 4pm Friday, word spread that the lockdown was finally over. I went down at 4:30pm, but the cops said, “No, you can’t go out until the morning.”

At about 5pm the Premier finally came on TV: ‘It’s now going to end at 11:59pm.’

That was a kick in the guts.

I had a birthday present for my granddaughter, Elena.

It hurt because I felt like an absolute ratbag for not being able to give her the present and a hug on the day. I don’t think any grandparent would feel any differently.

Andrew was interviewed remotely by Seven News on the second day of lockdown.

When I got up the next morning, Saturday, the first thing I did was look down. No coppers. I was allowed out.

It felt bloody beautiful, I can tell you. The weather didn’t matter—you were free!

To a certain extent, it felt like incarceration. You’re locked up though you’ve done nothing wrong.

I’m lucky, I’ve got family who would have delivered stuff (if they could), but there are a lot of people who’ve got no one. I was also lucky that I had enough medication to get me through.

The other thing is there’s people with mental health issues, how did they cope? At least I’ve got a phone. The bloke in the unit next door to me hasn’t got a phone, he’s got no contact with the outside world.

We were treated as second class citizens because we’re in public housing. If I’d been in a private high-rise block, there is no way known they could have got away with it. They would have had lawyers jumping all over them.

If I’d been in a private high-rise block, there’s no way known they could have got away with it. They would have had lawyers jumping all over them.

The week was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I was angry but I understood, to a certain extent.

But I still think that it could have been handled a lot better.

I think it was done in a very arbitrary way and without any form of compassion. It was humiliating.

If the government have to do a hard lockdown again they should knock on every door, actually tell people what’s happening, give them half an hour’s notice.

I’m not blaming the police (except for that first one). They acted with great respect.

But I must admit, every morning when I get up I still look out to see if there’s coppers downstairs again.

I’ve got no trust. Simple as that. And we’re still now allowed to move around freely, without any restrictions.

When we had SARS, you knew it would come to an end.

We had the global financial crisis; but you could see there was going to be an end to it.

But this? You can’t see an end.  

Photographer: Brendan Bonsack

by Christine Burrows

This story is part of our My Corona series: personal stories about the pandemic, life in isolation and Victorians’ hopes and fears for the future.  

Winter solstice, June. Numbers are rising. From 19 new cases in Melbourne to 75 a week later. “We still have a state of emergency,” the Health Minister says.

You wouldn’t think so in Bendigo. Especially amongst the blokes: the bloke next door; the four blokes who installed my heater; the bloke at the plant nursery; the huddle of council blokes at the park having smoko.

“G’day”, “Beautiful day”, “Monster frost,” I offer, hauling my little black dog away.

I moved here 18 months ago for affordable housing. Didn’t know a soul. Fresh air. Big sky.

It’s been lonely. COVID-19 makes it lonelier.

When coronavirus became a thing, I hunted down facts, wary of complex rabbit holes of fake news, fake truth, and political spin. Already mired in chronic despair, I wryly imagined it might solve my existential quandary. “Come get me, Corona.”

Four years earlier an organ transplant saved my life. For the first two years, my gratitude and optimism were irrepressible. Gradually, debilitating complications, medication side-effects and the increasing isolation eroded my hope of regaining a useful, meaningful life. I’m alone. Perpetually exhausted. Often physically and cognitively overwhelmed by the simplest task. My mental health mimics my body’s tug-of-war with itself and the traumas that brand it.

January was bad. The country was on fire. I turned 60. A couple of texts; two bunches of delivered flowers wilting in scalding heat.

Depression had me in its claws and jaws. I bunkered down inside myself, avoiding communication; except with my son.

Mid-January I took my last train trip into Melbourne to see him. He grounds me. Lunch in Flinders Lane. Crowded. Noisy. Couldn’t hear. Couldn’t talk. Couldn’t think. Felt confused. An exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. Sensory overwhelm. Distress. I fought vertigo and a tight band of abdominal pain, determined to enjoy this time together. Couldn’t cope. Asleep on the train. Barely left bed for three days. But I felt happy.

Late February, my next/last trip to Melbourne, ahead of the 25^th hospital procedure in four years to replace stents in my bile duct.

Another cherished meal and movie with my son for his birthday. As he entered his fifth and final year at uni he was contending with the sudden campus shut-down, poor online learning platform and inaccessibility of lecturers and key resources. His casual hospitality work and an internship vanished.

COVID-19 had landed. Xenophobes blamed Asian people for the virus. We were the only customers at the normally bustling Chinese restaurant; our small expression of support.

“I’m fine,” my son reassured me.

March. Shut-downs and restrictions hit people hard. Phone calls and messages ramped up. “Just calling to see how you are”. “Haven’t been in touch for a while. How’s life in Bendigo?” “Been thinking about you lately…”

Anxiety, clear and crisp. “Welcome to MY world!” I half-joked.

Iso, social distancing, hand hygiene, loss of income, loss of career, loss of freedom – all these things had been my world for five years. It was validating that others now experiencing them were struggling after only a few weeks. Perversely, it normalised my alienation and grief. Reduced the shame I felt for being an invalid.

Iso, social distancing, hand hygiene, loss of income, loss of career, loss of freedom – all these things had been my world for five years.

I listened to distant friends and family. A small thing I could offer. Empathy. The stent change hadn’t given me the anticipated energy uplift. I felt less sick, but still fatigued, in pain and fog-brained. Talking exhausted me, but was all I had to give. Routine blood tests showed anaemia. An iron infusion was organised. It would revive me!

Autumn. The COVID-19 ‘crisis’ dominated conversations, news and social media. ‘Unprecedented’ entered common vocabulary, as did Epidemiologist and ‘pivot’. Doomsday preppers and panicked ‘everyday Australians’ lost their minds. The ‘toilet paper war of 2020’ spawned hilarious memes, but signified something darker. I often suffer prolonged diarrhoea related to medication or bile duct blockage so I too value a secure toilet paper supply. I was awkwardly over-supplied from a pre-Christmas Who Gives a Crap delivery! I wanted to give it to someone in need. Distressing footage of frail people getting pushed aside in supermarkets by frantic stockpilers, trollies spilling over with toilet paper and pasta, horrified me. As did busloads of grocery tourists clearing supermarket shelves in regional towns. Meanwhile my 97-year-old father in New Zealand had another ‘cardiac event’. I didn’t expect to see him again.

With snake season over, I started walking my dog in the bush around old mining mullock heaps nearby. Strange solace. No people. My dog ran, bounced and swam off-leash. I ambled, ruminated and took photos of eucalyptus flowers. There I disconnected from the troubled, bizarre world, free of its pain and madness, though not free from my own. The frosts started early.

As an old mining city, the countryside around Bendigo has many mullock heaps.

Sometimes I’m glad I’m alone, taking whatever time I need to do my small tasks without pretending bravery or the competence I’ve lost. Glad to have simple needs, despite complex medical issues. Glad of my toilet paper, sufficient pantry staples and veggies growing in my garden. Habits acquired to meet basic needs when I’m too unwell to leave the house. Telehealth is great. It saves four to six hours of stressful travelling to/from specialist appointments. The $750 stimulus bought me a web-cam, a thick jumper, face masks, books, puzzles and a room heater.

Being immune-suppressed, most in-person interactions feel unsafe. People seem too close.

Except for my son. I want him closer. I worry for him. His carefully planned future disintegrated, blinked out like a mirage, just as it came within reach. Poised on his heel to pivot, he applies for every grad opportunity he can find. Generational disenfranchisement and exclusion of young people from decision-making concern him. I’m a disability pensioner; there’s no wealth-buffer nor family or community networks to give him a break.

“I’m fine,” he still reassures me.

I unreasonably expect myself to cope alone with way fewer coping resources than the younger, healthy, professional, socially-engaged, creative superwoman I used to be.

Pain is my normal. I notice its absence more than its presence. It sucks away optimism and resilience. Leaves a salty crust of cynicism and despair.

As COVID case numbers rise in Melbourne, whispers of a second wave are gov-splained as ‘expected’.

“We’re all in this together” goes the spin. But we’re not. Differential disadvantage means low-income people suffer more, for longer. Many won’t find a road back.

Winter solstice. The longest night. The wheel ever turning. With iron infusing my blood, I feel alive. It won’t last. I write this while I can, as I drift further away.

Am I you? We? Us? Them/they? Dynamic, creative, compassionate, brave? Or sleepless and afraid? We’ve got this! Have we?

I’ll stay in iso. Me and my little black dog.

by Jinghua Qian

This story is part of the My Corona series. We’re publishing personal stories about the pandemic, life in isolation and Victorians’ hopes and fears for the future.  

This is not your typical unemployment story. My experience is a little unusual. But maybe that’s precisely the point: the COVID-19 response from both state and federal governments makes certain assumptions about how we work, and a lot of us just don’t work that way.

I’m a writer. But often writing doesn’t really pay, or rather, the type of writing that’s worth doing tends to pay poorly, slowly, and irregularly, if at all.

Writing is both a vocation and a profession but it’s often not a job in a recognisable way. You cobble together a living out of various odds and ends while trying to build a career, and if there happens to be overlap between your life’s work and the things you get paid for, then you consider yourself lucky.

I’ve been lucky. Over the last decade, I’ve had jobs ranging from call centre operator to head of news at a well-regarded international media outlet. I’ve also drawn freelance income from writing, editing, public speaking, performing, radio and podcast making, producing events, transcribing, and proofreading. And I’ve done a lot of unpaid work in arts and activism, both for myself and for the world I want. I’m used to keeping lots of plates spinning.

Before the pandemic properly hit Australia, I was working at an online media outlet as a writer and editor on a fixed-term contract. I left that job in early March to become a full-time freelancer.

A week later, the country went into lockdown.

The arts sector (my main client) was totally devastated as theatres, galleries, cinemas and music venues closed.

Media outlets also started slashing their budgets and shedding staff.

I was terrified. I was supposed to be building my freelance business but instead it seemed like the entire industry was collapsing. Plus, maybe the world was ending. I kept seeing petitions calling for more government support for the arts, which I dutifully signed, but it felt like holding a placard in a tornado. I was reeling from shock and glued to the news, too struck with grief and uncertainty to apply for any of the grants or relief funds that started to pop up. I also didn’t know how to answer the question of how much income I’d lost because I’d only just started.

But I was still writing, still pitching, still numbly hustling away. There were the weeks where everyone only wanted COVID-related content, and then suddenly everyone wanted to read about something else. I struggled to come up with ideas; almost everything seemed in poor taste for this crisis.

When I did get work, it was beset by all the predictable freelance problems: by mid-May, I was still waiting on payment for work completed in March. For some commissions, I spent more time chasing payment and wrangling paperwork than I’d spent doing (and being paid for) the work itself.

As a freelancer, I usually have few rights and no leverage to negotiate, though salaried staff aren’t necessarily faring much better – a few of my articles are stuck in limbo because the companies are going through layoffs.

It seemed like I’d chosen a terrible time to leave my job, but there were also benefits to joining the teeming ranks of the unemployed during a global pandemic.

So many mutual aid groups sprang up. Newspapers that are ordinarily devoted to vilifying welfare recipients softened their stance.

The Federal Government doubled the payment that jobseekers receive.

On the one hand, it made me feel sick to see how politicians and media commentators divided up the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor, but on the other, it showed me what a critical mass can achieve. What a testament to the power of the collective!

It only took a pandemic for people to see that social security is just as its name implies – an essential feature of a safe and healthy society.

It only took a pandemic for people to see that social security is just as its name implies – an essential feature of a safe and healthy society.

Eventually, I managed to access unemployment benefits, which I probably wouldn’t have been eligible for under the normal rules. It was still a frustrating process – no one would advise me on whether I was supposed to apply for JobSeeker or JobKeeper, and most of the available information didn’t make sense for sole traders – but overall it seemed less punitive and humiliating than the usual Centrelink experience.

I was already a union member with the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance – which suspended fees for members who requested it – and in March I also joined the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union.

It feels like there’s an opportunity now to turn some of the lessons of the pandemic into real change.

So much of the emergency response from state and federal governments seems to misunderstand the ongoing precarity that many of us are in.

Writers are far from the only ones for whom the pandemic just pours fuel onto the pre-existing problems of capitalism today, but the crisis has made it very obvious just how unsustainable the arts and media industries are, even as people consume more news, music, television and film than ever.

As Jacinda Woodhead – then editor of long-running literary journal Overland – wrote last year, the Australia Council for the Arts funding system fosters a “disposable arts culture” focused on the new and shiny. As a result, artists are in a constant state of precarity and crisis.

That means that for many of us, there’s nothing to return to, nothing to recover. The status quo is already broken. It’s an empty bowl – with a smear of racism, sexism and ableism to boot.

In May, Naomi Riddle, editor of online arts platform Running Dog, wrote:

“The arts community, then, continues on in a state of unending precarity. But a consequence of this tenuousness is a refusal to reckon with its decades-long reliance on government subsidies, philanthropic donations and corporate sponsorship. […] Is it any wonder that when some of us hear the phrase ‘art sector’ combined with ‘unprecedented times’, we find ourselves without the capacity or the belief or the will or the desire to invest whole-heartedly in ‘saving’ it?”

It feels like a cliché at this point to say that a reckoning is long overdue, but it’s true.

The way things were – it wasn’t working.

I’m not sure I have anything cogent and concise to say about my hopes for the months ahead, because I can only whisper, naively, sheepishly: What if we never go back?  

by Olivia Muscat

This story is part of our My Corona series: personal stories about the pandemic, life in isolation and Victorians’ hopes and fears for the future.

I think a lot of people would agree that lockdown is one of the strangest collective experiences they’ve ever been through. And while individuals may have been able to take some positives from being at home, I’m sure it isn’t something that most people are eager to go through again.

As the restrictions are lifted and we’re allowed (with caution and physical distancing) to see our friends and go out to eat, I find myself feeling very much still in the midst of it all. It will be a long time before I, and many other disabled people, feel that we can get out and live our lives as we did before Covid.

As keen as I am to get myself back into the world – slowly and carefully, of course – as a blind person it’s much easier said than done. I find myself full of fear, having lost so much of my independence. Before lockdown my life consisted of something different nearly every day, often travelling on public transport, meeting new people, going to places I’d never been before.

That means I touch a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. Sometimes I need to, like when I’m holding a stair rail for balance, when I’m at a café I’ve never been to before, when I’m looking for something. Sometimes I touch without thinking, to explore a cool texture on a wall or have a look at something interesting in a shop. Sometimes it’s unintentional: I accidentally brush up against and put my hand on loads of things, and often those things are really gross – I’ve gotten up close and personal with more than my fair share of bins.

I also unintentionally come into contact with complete strangers all the time. When I’m reaching for something and they move in front of me at the wrong moment. Or, much more frustratingly, when people decide they absolutely must help me (interfere) without my consent and grab my arms or hands, because they are certain that I couldn’t possibly have any idea where I’m going and I must be lost. This is not on at the best of times, and I don’t see people refraining from doing it just because of a little thing like required physical distancing.

Many blind people or people with a vision impairment must touch public infrastructure to travel.

In my regular life I try not to be concerned about germs too much. I carry hand sanitiser and wipes with me basically everywhere I go and wash my hands when it makes sense. But it would be unfeasible to do so every time my hands come into contact with something foreign. For a blind person, being unable to deal with the thought of germs would be debilitating.

But the thought of getting Covid-19 or of putting somebody else at risk is not to be taken lightly. So I feel it will be a good long while before it’s safe for me to be out in public by myself.

I also have a guide dog, who doesn’t understand the requirements for physical distancing and the danger of germs (she would eat somebody’s dirty tissue given half a chance). Between us I can’t see when I’m too close to somebody and she doesn’t know she has to keep at least 1.5 meters away from humans.

by Veronica Heritage-Gorrie

This story is part of our My Corona series: personal stories about the pandemic, life in isolation and Victorians’ hopes and fears for the future.  

UNLIKE in the rest of world and indeed the rest of so-called Australia, when Covid-19 first entered our Sovereignty-unceded shores life as we once knew it changed, but not really for First Nation people.

But that is not the story I want to tell.

I want to tell you that while most people, excluding essential workers, were self-isolating and staying home as per restrictions handed down by the government, I was not able to. I had to leave the safety of my tiny rural township and my home to go stay in Melbourne for six weeks for my father’s cancer treatment. I was essentially risking my life to save my father’s.

My father who is a respected Elder and has dementia had been diagnosed with cancer, nasal cavity cancer to be more precise. He had surgery to remove most but not all the cancer and required radiation. Due to the location of the cancer, the regional hospital close to home was not able to treat it. This meant that we had to travel to Melbourne every Monday and return home every Friday after treatment for six weeks.

We stayed in accommodation provided by the hospital that is subsidised by the Government. This sounds good but it wasn’t. We were staying in a place that was culturally unsafe, at a time when my pre-existing anxiety was heightened due to Coronavirus. We slept in a small room on single beds. This took me back to when I was a child and Dad and I lived in a one bedroom flat.

This place was only a short walk from the hospital, but my father was unable to walk that far so we drove, and when I couldn’t find disability parking I double parked for an hour every day.

As much as I needed to assist my father to walk and find the location of his radiation, and as much as I wanted to go with him, I couldn’t due to the restrictions – only patients were allowed. So I had to stay in the car and hope that he remembered where to go. More anxiety.

He would ring me when he got inside and ring again when he had finished. This was our routine.

But I had another routine that kept me somewhat sane.

Every day after treatment, I would drop my father off and drive to my daughter’s house for a special window-visit. I knew it risked me getting fined by police but I didn’t care.

My daughter, months earlier, had bravely given birth to premature twins. The twins were in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit for a little over four months. Just as COVID-19 kicked off the twins were home with Mum and Dad.

These babies were my reason. The reason I needed to keep my shit together.

But my mental health was suffering. I wanted so badly to be with them, on the inside with them, but I couldn’t.

So I would return to my father. I assisted him in every aspect of his day, but not before I had to literally run the gauntlet of supermarkets in infected hotspots to buy groceries for us, wearing facemask and gloves. This was when I panicked the most. In every aisle my heartbeat would race; I could feel it pulsating in my neck and throbbing in my ears.

Like many Australians, Ms Heritage-Gorrie was terrified about visiting supermarkets.

By the third week, my father started feeling the effects of radiation. Each day he was becoming frailer and losing weight at a rapid rate. It affected his physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.

There were mornings my father and I would get up at 4am to have a cuppa and a yarn. We would talk until daylight and on some occasions he cried. To watch my father cry was the hardest. My father is my rock, the one person who has always been there for me.

You see, my father raised me on his own from when I was eight years old. I never wanted him to see me upset, so I would wait until I had a shower or when I was in my car alone to cry.

To watch my father cry was the hardest. My father is my rock, the one person who has always been there for me.

It’s been a few weeks since the end of the cancer treatment and we are now awaiting an appointment date for him to be tested to verify if all the cancer has gone.

My father and I are in limbo and it’s frightening. He is still feeling the effects of radiation: mobility loss, hair loss, nausea and mouth ulcers that require him to be on a soft food diet.

As the restrictions were slowly being lifted and people were leaving their homes I had only just started to self-isolate so I could go be with my daughter and the twins.

Hooray, I hear you say; but not so fast. I self-isolated and went to stay with my daughter as planned, for four days and three nights, but while I was there it meant I was not with my father and this caused me more stress and anxiety. I found myself calling him at every opportunity to check on him, but it became too much, it became over-bearing. I had to go home.

As I left the house I felt emotionally and mentally torn between staying with my only grandchildren or going home to my sick father. I cried all the way home, but when I got there he was so happy to see me and I felt like I had made the right decision. I won’t have my father for long but what time I do have, I want to make it count.

My mental health is not the best right now. I have made an appointment to see my GP to do a mental health plan, so that I can get the professional help I need. I implore others who are having bad days or crappy moments to talk to someone too, because there is no shame or embarrassment in asking for help.