23 APRIL 2020

​The single most extraordinary thing in that odd little period was that faith in government and the media went up. That strange moment between support, submission, compliance. It was what would come next that would destroy the country.

There were so many signs in the lead up, so many signals that something terrible was about to go wrong. Every pundit on the planet was active. Medical experts competed for attention.

In the car park at Oak Flats as night settled there was a deep sense of threat in the air. Potential friends became potential enemies just like that. What was once a gruff  no-nonsense working class suburb was already diminished.

That once sacred most beautiful of lakes, Illawarra, now reminded him more of Pokhara in Nepal in the early 70s and anything else. There were lights strung around the shore. Occasional signs of celebration. Mostly there was silence.

He was out of sorts, perhaps with himself, but most of all the prevailing sentiment. The country was rallying, briefly, around the prime minister Scott Morrison. There were pieces in what remained of the media lauding the father of the nation. Every last one of them sickened him to the core. An old News Editor of his at The Sydney Morning Herald, Richard Glover, now a well known radio personality on the taxpayer funded ABC, had written a piece for the Washington Post titled “Australia’s leader is winning the argument on the coronavirus”.

“Australians like to see themselves as rebellious people, distrustful of authority — but the coronavirus has changed that.

“While small protests against the lockdowns have erupted in the United States, and some in Britain have insisted on their right to party, in Australia we’re mostly doing what we’re told.

“In Sydney, public transport use is down to levels not seen for nearly 100 years. Attendance in government schools in Victoria is down to just three percent. In parks, walkers and joggers dutifully arc around each other like passing ships.”

“Certainly, there are voices attacking the government’s response as excessive. Fittingly — given the topsy-turvy politics of covid-19 — the prime minister’s main critics are populist right-wingers from his own side of politics, such as the radio host Alan Jones and the columnist Andrew Bolt. Australia’s very success in limiting infections is now being presented by Bolt as proof the threat “was wildly exaggerated."

“At the moment, the prime minister is winning the argument. The lockdown, however onerous, is working. Listening to experts is working. And working together, across political parties, is working.

“Will this new attitude outlive the pandemic? Probably not. But right now, the Australian and New Zealand “bubble” looks like a pretty good place to be.”

Well he could hardly have agreed less. But then Alex had never much agreed with Richard even in the good old days, when he had been one of the new breed on the fusty, venerable old institution known as The Sydney Morning Herald. Well, not on what constituted a story. But it just sounded like bad blood.

Richard had gone on to have a stellar career, much beloved by Sydney’s chattering classes. Glitter city. While Alex had grumbled on, a general reporter, never rising to the heights of editor.

At a newspaper reunion a little while back he had said to Richard: “You know, the best thing about you as news editor was, there were worse to come.”

Richard didn’t take the joke, looked if anything a little miffed, and soon enough was off mingling with the crowd, his crowd.

As for Old Alex, he could not believe the people's gullibility. Although, of course, he should not have been surprised.

None of it would last. None of it made any clear sense. There had been weeks of extraordinary confusion, a series of contradictory announcements which appeared almost deliberately designed to instill panic into the population. It seemed, in his fevered imagination, or was it in fact the truth, that there were many dark forces at play. That the evils he saw in his imagination were indeed very real.

Meetings of more than two people have been banned. It was simply a version of martial law. Introduced under the cover of covid-19. There were so many stressors.

The trains were empty. The streets were empty. Support submission compliance. It would not last.

The father of the nation had just put more than 700000 people on the dole queues and leftwing commentators praised him to the sky. Go figure. Their support, like the public’s, would vanish as rapidly as it came.

Ghostly scene after ghostly scene.

“It didn't make any sense before'' was one of the most common responses when he said the world no longer made sense. Well it did make sense, just in a most terrible way. Welcome to the crash.

He watched a homeless man, "off his meds" as the old expression went, trying to escape the attention of the Rangers in the Botanic Gardens. He kept walking away. They kept following. The man would turn around to shout at them. They muscled up inside their uniforms. These tedious men. Give them a uniform, give them a gun, it went straight to their heads. Weak men made strong.

A happy-go-lucky nation had turned into a nation of dobbers just like that.

A place that should have been safe was not safe at all.

The man scurried on up through the manicured bushes. He appeared to be doing nobody any harm whatsoever. He was surprisingly articulate, as so many people of the street often are. These fallen angels.

The men kept following. He begged for them to leave him alone. One of them, stubby, overweight, plunged back into his vehicle and careered up another path to cut the homeless man off. 

This was Sydney 2020.