The article. So people donât give them clicks
The Australianâs Australians of the Year: The stoic Aussies who crushed Covid
Caroline Overington 10:15PM January 22, 2021
Sophie and Patrick Haseler at Port Melbourne beach with their kids Caitlin, 10, Charlie, 8, and Toby, 6, on Friday. Picture: Aaron Francis
It is not uncommon for Australians to be asked to put differences aside, and pull together.
Sometimes, it is because fires are raging or else itâs drought, or flooding rain. Then came 2020, the year like no other.
The novel coronavirus, an Âinfection already killing millions overseas, took hold on these shores, and to defeat it, Australians had to act as one.
For the commonwealth, and for the common good.
But there were two groups of Australians who were asked to do more. For longer. In more Âdifficult circumstances, than any other.
Almost all are and always will be anonymous.
The first group comprises Victorians â ordinary people, living normal lives â tasked with somehow beating back a raging threat.
EDITORIAL: Honouring unsung heroes after a year like no other
The second group were those who helped them, not only in Victoria, but across the country: the contact tracers, who were, again, mostly ordinary people, placed on the tail of a loathsome contagion as it wound its silent, way through nursing homes and shopping centres, schools and fast food courts.
They had to stop it dead.
It is to these two groups that The Weekend Australian today bestows its highest, annual honour: the Victorian people, and their allies, the nationâs contact tracers, are our Australians of the Year.
Why? Because each was handed a grim responsibility. And to their daunting tasks, they rose.
At the height of the crisis, with most other states largely clear of COVID-19, it was Victorians who found themselves waking to news of more than 700 infections a day. To more than 50 dead, in one afternoon.
NSW contact tracers Tove Fitzgerald, Jennie Musto, Timmy Lockwood, Jennifer Case and Carolyn Murray. Picture: Nikki Short
It wasnât their fault. They werenât in any way to blame. But they had to get it under control.
They had to do it for their own sake, but also because the health, the wellbeing, the freedom and ultimately the prosperity of the whole country was at stake.
One state, to save the nation.
Patrick and Sophie Haseler and their three children â Caitlin, 10; Charlie, 8, and Toby, 6 â are in some ways typical: lovely normal people, who had been minding their own business, and living their quiet lives, in Eltham, Patrick working full time, and Sophie four days, when the first lockdown came.
They flipped immediately to working from home; the kids started home schooling.
âToby was in prep, and he was one of those kids who had been hugely excited to go to school,â Ms Haseler says.
He had just weeks earlier posed, beaming, for the obligatory âoversized backpackâ picture, and âthen it was suddenly overâ.
By yearâs end, the family would complete 15 weeks of home schooling. They would Zoom and PowerPoint for work. They replanted the garden, completed pavement chalk drawings; organised scavenger hunts, and baked chocolate chip cookies.
And yes, everyone had put on the COVID four (or five) kilograms.
âWe can laugh now, but there were a few wobbly days,â Ms Haseler says.
âToby had a class meeting ⌠I really wanted him to connect with his friends, and I couldnât find the passcode. I started breaking down, just the sheer frustration, thinking I canât do anything properly, Iâm not being a good mother, Iâm not being a good worker.
âBut definitely, absolutely, the feeling was: this has to be done. Because it was such a dire situation, we knew we just knew what we had to do.â
At the height of the crisis, Victorians were confined to their homes for 23 hours a day. During the one hour they were permitted outside, most could only walk in endless circles, in a 5km radius, masked against the virus and swaddled against the cold.
There were night curfews. There was a heavy police Âpresence.
Some people lost their jobs, and some their lifeâs work; some were sick, and others spent silent days swabbing buttons on the pedestrian lights, so that others might cross safely.
Some fought for their lives in aged care; and some for the lives of others, in hospitals.
There were mental and physical health challenges; there was sorrow; and there was yearning. Oh, how there was yearning. Because they missed each other, as they missed school and family and funerals and parties and simple things like being able to high-five a friend at the pub, or holler that the footy.
There was no footy. They lost their grand final.
And they pressed on.
Hadia Komba with her children, from left, Rayan, 6, Zakir, 4, and Nadine, 12, in their Flemington housing commission apartment in Melbourne. Picture: Aaron Francis
Hadia Komba is a mother of five, and a Horn of Africa refugee who came to Victoria from the Comoros Island in 1996.
On July 4, she returned home to her apartment in the public housing estate in Flemington to find Victoria Police instituting one of the harshest lockdown Ârestrictions in the world.
She would not be allowed to leave her home for any reason.
âI didnât have nappies, I didnât have milk and I had a three-year-old child,â Mr Komba says.
âI wanted to go to Woolworths just to grab some things and then the police stopped us and said, âYouâre not allowed to go anywhereâ.â
She had one child doing the VCE, while others were still learning to walk.
âIt was really, really challenging,â she said.
It would be days before the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services was able to deliver supplies.
She began to wonder if they were being punished: âIt was really harsh for us because we know in Victoria there were even areas with higher cases than us ⌠Iâm thinking why do we need to do this? Is it because weâre refugees or living in a small apartment or low income?â
But no. As the number of daily infections continued to rise, Ârestrictions soon came for Âeveryone.
Victorians knew that life was not like this in other states. They understood this was their burden to carry: the mental and social constraints, especially for those who lived alone, and were single, who were banned by law from human touch.
And yet they didnât baulk.
Which is not to say they did not grumble. There were quibbles, and protestations; there was mumbling and chuntering, with some Victorians â stalwart and stoic and strong â surely feeling they were lions, being led by Âdonkeys.
Others passionately believed in Premier Andrews, as Dan, the man with the only workable plan.
And since none could do it alone, they found unity. And in so doing, they found the true meaning of community, and they were reminded, in the process, of so much that makes Victoria a civic capital of tidy towns, and literature, theatre, and music.
And of course craft!
Because didnât they have those bespoke single-origin sustainable masks worked up on the old Singer in a jiffy? And they wore them.
It was not a minor task, as difficult days turned into weeks and months. And it was different the second time. There was none of the novelty of suddenly being home, watching hour upon hour of Tiger King on Netflix.
Simple pleasures in which other parts of the nation had delighted â so, thatâs how you make sourdough! â in Victoria became a grind. They did their best with streaming and Zoom, and online book clubs. But it was so monotonous. Also worrisome.
They at times felt abandoned by the rest of the nation, as jokes were made at their expense.
âAustralia battling Covid is like the Spice Girls reunion: everything is going great and then Victoria goes and ruins it.â
Oh yes, it was funny at first. But not by day 95.
Many Victorians started to think: the rest of Australia didnât get this.
And itâs true: unless you lived it, you canât really know.
Because it wasnât their fault.
Yet only they could fix it.
And so inspired, they began to treat one another not as vectors, but as neighbours. There was great dignity in the stoic way they embraced the challenge.
With them were our second group: the contact tracers, some of whom are epidemiologists and infectious diseases experts, but most of whom are ordinary Australians, working with white boards, and Textas, to map and link each COVID patient with even their most casual contacts, all of whom must then be called, and encouraged to lock down.
More than 500,000 of these calls have been made by patient, careful, unsung contact tracers.
It worked. They got those numbers down. And toward the end, when 700 daily cases in Victoria had become 500, and then 400, and then none and none â the blessed doughnut days! â Victorians found themselves bursting to be free.
But no. They would, they were told, have to do just one more day. Just so we can all be sure.
Many thought they couldnât do it. Just one more day was one day more than they could bear. And yet they bore it.
Then came that brilliant moment, so beautifully captured by the journalist who cheekily asked the Premier if it was time to âget on the beersâ.
It was. And it was so sweet, and so precious, to see sorrow give way to joy; to see children run in their new sneakers â one of many, many packages bought online â across the lawn to grandmaâs house.
People wept. Because yes, it had been hard. It had been frustrating. But in conquering the virus, Victorians, working with contact tracers, nationwide, set an example for the generation they are raising: COVID children, who will grow up knowing what it means to be part of a community.
A neighbourhood. A grand old city. A great state.
By virtue of the of sacrifices made by Victorians, all Australians today face a brighter future.
Our losses have been reduced. Our burdens relieved.
And so it is to these two groups that we today say: thank you.
The reason Australia does not suffer as London and other capitals suffer today, is because contact tracers tracked that virus down. And because the people of Victoria beat it back. And so, we salute them.
Our Australians of the Year.
Get absolutely â â â â â â .
We should have a newscorp specific cannon.
So many words just to say Andrews sucks.
Media need to request more interesting data to report on.
There needs to be a column for Australian Open infections.
Also one for the UK strain.
Also another for the South African strain.
Another for the Brazilian strain.
All are in cases acquired overseas, but that info just isnât going to help cover their ad revenue quota.
It would really be handy to know how many towels have been stolen by HQ guests on a daily basis.
Those are TAX PAID stolen towels!
I wonder if it occurred to the Australian that Andrews is a Victorian too, so they just crowned him Australian of the year?
Frydenberg saying that it is up to the States to come forward with concrete proposals on alternatives to city based HQ.
So, no planning at Commonwealth level on managing quarantine for retuned travellers and others coming into the country?
Who is allowed into the country at the moment?
Obviously ex-pats and foreign diplomats.
And they need to stop allowing people (with money) being able to isolate at home.
NSW zero local, 3 OS
11.3k tests
63 active cases ( no breakdown of local /OS)
Case in the community in New Zealand.
They are a returned traveller who cleared the required two tests (and 14 days) in hotel quarantine. Then after they had been loose in the community a few days she developed symptoms and tested positive.
Had been travelling through Spain and the Netherlands and caught a flight to NZ from LondonâŚ
Thatâs why some places are looking at introducing 21 days quarantine.
Itâs considered most likely that she picked it up in MIQ - not an extra-long incubation. Sounds like there was some sort of contact with an infected traveller
Hasnât this happened before in NZ?
I dont think so. Not traveller to traveller. I think 2 MIQ workers contracted it from hotel guests last year.
Reportedly if you test negative on day 12 of MIQ, you can finish quarantine.
Reported that she tested positive 11 days after leaving quarantine.
Fk off covid. That is ridiculous!
What is MIQ?