COVID-19 Diaries: The Long Wave

Stephanie and Richard wave to Stephanie’s sister, Jackie, who is quarantining on the 13th floor of the Mercure Hotel in Haymarket after returning from Canada where she lost her job when COVID-19 hit.

More Australians have been returning home from overseas in recent months, but it is unlikely that all will be home before Christmas, a promise the government made in September. Nearly 40,000 Australians remain stranded abroad after air traffic closed down due to the outbreak of the epidemic 12 months ago.

Part of an ongoing series, COVID-19 Diaries.

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COVID-19 Diaries: NSW-QLD Border

Vehicles whiz past signs warning of COVID-19 related border restrictions on the New England highway, heading north towards the NSW-Queensland border.

While the NSW-Queensland border re-opened on November 3rd to most of NSW, it is still closed to residents of Greater Sydney, due to continuing, intermittent community transmission of the coronavirus in Australia’s largest city. This means all NSW travellers are required to apply for a declaration pass online for inspection at checkpoints at the Queensland border.

Yesterday’s outbreak of cases in South Australia is now threatening the further delay of the border opening up completely.

Part of an ongoing series, ‘COVID-19 Diaries’.

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COVID-19 Diaries: NSW-VIC Border Crossing

Photographs from the NSW-Victoria border at Albury-Wodonga where there is still a heavy round-the-clock police presence, despite 12 consecutive days of zero community transmissions of COVID-19 in Victoria.

Meanwhile, NSW continues to experience cases of transmissions, particularly in Sydney. In fact, researchers say that the numbers of the coronavirus in NSW could be up to three times the reported tally.

The NSW-Victoria border was closed on July 7th earlier this year, with some exemptions granted due to work and health issues. Since then, strict border crossing checks have been in place with travellers having to apply for an online QR-coded permit, which is scanned by police at checkpoints.

The border is set to reopen on the 23rd of November, 2020.

Part of an ongoing series, ‘COVID-19 Diaries’.

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COVID-19 Diaries: The Bell Ringers of St Andrews

Bell ringers wear medical masks and social distance in the bell tower of St Andrews Cathedral to perform their first repertoire since March, when Sydney went into lockdown as a result of COVID-19.

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COVID-19 Diaries: Sydney International Airport

Images of Sydney International Airport terminal, which, despite a trickle of incoming and outgoing flights, remains otherwise deserted due to the closing of borders resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

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COVID-19 Diaries: Property Crash and Tax Cuts

A mask-wearing couple walk past a vacant shopfront offering 3 months free rent as an incentive for prospective tenants.

A remanent sign, from the height of lockdown, in the window of a cafe gone bust.

With businesses being driven to the wall as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, commercial properties around the world are seeing record vacancies. Residential properties, super funds, small businesses and workers, in particular, are feeling the knock-on effects of this downturn.

Today, in an attempt to stimulate the economy, the Australian government handed down what is generally seen as a business-focussed budget. Tax cuts are a central pillar of the budget, most of which will be directed towards people earning above $100,000. The budget will see the largest deficit recorded in history and hinges on a vaccine being developed and rolled out before July next year.

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COVID-19 Diaries: A Game of Chess

A man wears a protective mask and gloves while playing a game of chess in Sydney’s Hyde Park.

Today marked the second consecutive days of zero community transmission in NSW. As a result, South Australia has opened up its border with NSW, without quarantine restrictions.

While cases of COVID-19 have been falling across Australia, so have testing rates, suggesting that the infection numbers may be misleading and that the virus is still spreading in the community undetected.

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COVID-19 Diaries: Central Station Pop Up Testing Centre

A pop-up COVID-19 testing centre has been set up in one of the vacant shops at Central Station on Eddie Avenue.

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COVID-19 Diaries: The Bubble Generation

A masked couple push their baby in a pram with a protective sealed covering through the streets of Sydney.

While much attention has focussed on the immediate devastation amongst the elderly, the long term effects of COVID-19 on children and young people have yet to be fully understood.

But emerging research suggests those impacts will be physiological, psychological, economic and social. Factors such as stress, inactivity and isolation may negatively impact the development of a generation of children currently growing up under the coronavirus.

Part of an ongoing series, ‘COVID-19 Diaries’.

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COVID-19 Diaries: Sydney CBD Cluster

There were 10 new cases of COVID-19 recorded in NSW today, 4 of those related to the CBD cluster, bringing that total to 64. 61 of those cases are related to the City Tattersalls Club gym cluster.

In total, there are almost 4,000 cases of COVID-19 cases in NSW.

Part of an ongoing series, ‘COVID-19 Diaries’.

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COVID-19 Diaries: Past Present

Masked commuters in the CBD pass by hoardings displaying photos of Sydney from around the time of the city’s last pandemic - the so-called Spanish Flu - more than 100 years ago. It is estimated that over 15,000 died from that virus and possibly as many as two million Australians were infected. The total population of Australia in 1918 was 5 million.

The current toll for the COVID-19 virus in Australia is 737 deaths and 26,136 infections.

Part of an ongoing series, ‘COVID-19 Diaries’.

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COVID-19 Diaries: Mask Wearing on City Buses

Photographs at peak hour at Wynyard Station in Sydney’s CBD where mask wearing commuters disembark from morning buses from the North Shore.

The NSW government is currently considering mandatory mask wearing on public transport as the bus drivers agreed to back down from a threatened strike last week due to workplace health and social distancing concerns on crowded buses.

Several clusters of the COVID-19 virus have been linked to city buses in the last few days.

Part of an ongoing series, ‘COVID-19 Diaries’.

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COVID-19 Diaries: Eyes Without Faces

More and more pressure is being applied on the NSW Government to make face masks mandatory in certain public spaces, such as on public transport. In the meantime, more and more people are taking it upon themselves to ‘mask up’ when out and about.

These photographs of shoppers, office workers and commuters were taken in Sydney’s CBD against the growing number of black hoardings which have sprung up around the city, where prominent retail shops once stood, now closed down and boarded up due to the economic downturn.

While photographing these images, I wondered about the thousands of deeply personal stories from behind the masks - these eyes without faces - that hurriedly passed me by; stories of anguish, strained love and unrelenting anxiety simultaneously suppressed and brought to the fore by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Part of an ongoing series, ‘COVID-19 Diaries’

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COVID-19 Diaries: Graham

Graham wears a medical mask as he busks outside a supermarket in Potts Point, one of Sydney’s COVID-19 ‘hotspots’.

Part of an ongoing series, ‘COVID-19 Diaries’.

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COVID-19 Diaries: Outbreak at Catholic Girls School

Two school girls from St. Vincents College emerge from Kings Cross Station yesterday, a day before a COVID-19 case was detected at the school. Today, the school was closed down for cleaning.

That brings the outbreak number in Potts Point to four (Thai Rock, The Apollo, The Cruising Yacht Club of Australia and now St. Vincents College), further entrenching the area as one of the hotspots of note in NSW.

Part of an ongoing series, ‘COVID-19 Diaries’.

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COVID-19 Diaries: Kings Cross Testing Centre

A masked woman walks her dog past a COVID-19 testing centre in the heart of Kings Cross, as health care workers look on.

Potts Point and Kings Cross is a coronavirus 'hotspot' in NSW, with several outbreaks in the area.

Part of an ongoing series, ‘COVID-19 Diaries’.

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COVID-19 Diaries: Return to the Streets

A woman wearing a face mask walks past a homeless person outside an upmarket department store on Elizabeth Street in the fashionable end of Sydney’s CBD.

During the initial COVID-19 lockdown of Sydney in March, many homeless people were given temporary accomodation in low budget hotels around the city. Since then, however, more and more homeless have been seen back out on the streets, especially in the last few weeks. With fears that a second wave of the pandemic is just around the corner, a continuing economic downturn may see even more people struggling to keep a roof over their heads.

Forecasts for unemployment, for instance, have now been revised up to 11% by Christmas, with an effective rate of 13% and may blow out even further in case of a second wave in NSW. Meanwhile the ‘mutual obligation’ requirements have been reimposed by Centrelink to everyone on Jobseeker payments, and the Jobseeker supplement reduced to $250 a fortnight by September. With small businesses being driven to the wall by the pandemic and the number of positions vacant slashed, these moves have been seen as punitive, ‘offensive’ and ‘dumb’. The Unemployed Workers Union is encouraging those on the dole to ‘strike’.

Part of an ongoing series ‘COVID-19 Diaries’.

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COVID-19 Diaries: Protest at the ABC

Masked Falun Gong members demonstrate outside the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) after the media outlet’s investigative report on the inner workings of the reclusive group and its leader.

The demonstrators have been staging a daily vigil protest since the broadcast of the programme last week. Mask wearing and social distancing have been observed during the protest.

Part of an ongoing series, ‘COVID-19 Diaries’.

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