In the early days of strict lockdown, we had to learn how to live like lighthouse keepers. Visitors such as our friend Mike [inset] were kept out on the front verandah of our 120-year-old Queenslander.
The IGA supermarket, our local fruit shop and our chemist all began delivering to their customers to help us during the scariest part of Covid. Our front verandah became the perfect undercover drop-off place.
From watching CNN and the BBC, we saw the catastrophe play out in Italy and Britain and New York. Everyone in Australia knew that hospitals and doctors and nurses and even morgues would be overwhelmed because there was no treatment for patients sick or dying from this new Corona virus.
In the early stages, scientists did not even know whether Covid was transmitted more readily through the air by droplets or aerosols, or whether, like the flu, you could pass it on by leaving traces on surfaces such as door handles. We were told to cough into your elbow, wear a mask, and wash your hands a lot.
We came up with a system where we washed some groceries and put others into “quarantine”. One quarantine station was the kitchen dresser. Scientists debated how long the virus could survive on different surfaces and still infect a person enough to make them sick.
The best news was that soap suds and detergent broke the virus surface and demolished it. So we were advised to wash the groceries.
We would wash the outside of groceries.
Quarantine station number 2 was Olive’s silky oak sideboard.
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