City streets drain of life in Australia's toughest lockdown

Melbourne’s usually vibrant downtown streets were
draining of signs of life on Wednesday on the eve of Australia’s toughest-ever
pandemic restrictions coming into force.
Many of the stylish boutiques and eateries in a city
dubbed Australia’s Hipster Capital that prides itself on superior coffee had
already closed their doors ahead of a ban on non-essential businesses that will
throw 250,000 people out of work from Thursday.
Defense personnel in camouflage fatigues and police
officers patrolled the streets enforcing pandemic rules that include mandatory
masks, which the few pedestrians were abiding by.
The closing down of Australia’s second-largest city,
which usually accounts for a quarter of the nation’s economic activity, also
coincided with frenetic preparation.
Hairdresser Niki Fiocca said she had been solidly
booked by customers in recent days before her salon must close for at least six
weeks.
“I just hope that this all works out for us,” said
Fiocca, revealing she felt “a little bit under stress.”
“If everyone did the right thing, maybe this
wouldn’t have happened,” she added, referring to Melbourne’s growing COVID-19
infections.
Victoria set a new daily record of 725 cases on
Wednesday. Elsewhere in Australia, only 14 new infections were found.
A Victoria state government website crashed on
Wednesday when it was overwhelmed by employees in essential services applying
for permits that would allow them to leave home for work from Thursday.
Melbourne café owner Maria Iatrou’s business has
been classified as essential so she can continue selling takeaway coffee and
home deliveries on Thursday while many businesses will be closed.
She’s tiring of the seemingly ever-changing
restrictions.
When pandemic restrictions were imposed by Melbourne
zip codes last month, she found herself across the street from competitors that
didn’t have to endure the same.
The playing field was leveled when the rules were
spread citywide.
Now she must adapt to the new lockdown that will put
the non-essential workforce, and many of her customers, out of work.
“It’s not only that there is that many people out of
a job, they’re also telling everybody to stay home and only got out for one
hour a day to go shopping or whatever -- I don’t understand why we have been
told to stay open,” Iatrou said.
She questions why a liquor store is classified as an
essential business but a hairdresser was not.
“There have been some half-hearted attempts at
things and if you’re going to shut things down, shut them down. Now it’s, You
can stay open and you can stay open, but you can’t," Iatrou said.
Many Melbourne businesses in this city of 5 million
are not expected to survive the second and harshest lockdown.
Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Michael
Kidd urged Australians who live outside Victoria to support family and friends
in Melbourne.
“The surprise phone call, an email, a video
catch-up, even a card or a letter with positive messages of love or support can
make a big difference to our family members and our friends in Victoria who
find themselves living under the restrictions,” Kidd said in a nationally
televised news conference.
Iatrou did not know if her café would survive the
second lockdown.
“It’s really, really hard to say at the moment,
because it hasn’t officially kicked off yet,” she said. “But as usual, there’s
a lot more hoops to jump through and a lot more paper work.”
“I had to organize (work) permits for my employees
today which was so much fun when the site had already crashed in the morning,”
she added.
Melbourne residents were evenly split between those
who resented the new impositions and those who wholehearted supported them, she
said.
Authorities are concerned that many Melbourne
residents were ignoring orders to stay home, even when they were infected with
the coronavirus.
A 38-year-old Melbourne woman has been charged with
repeatedly bashing a 26-year-old police woman’s head against a concrete
sidewalk this week. The officer had been attacked for asking the woman why she
wasn’t wearing a mask, police allege.
Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews has acknowledge that
his government was asking a lot of residents with the new level of restrictions
which would cause hardship.
Andrews has tweeted extraordinary photographs of
Melbourne’s usually busy thoroughfares now eerily empty with a two-word caption:
Thank you.