Light at the end of the long tunnel

The marathon like situation of lockdown in Melbourne has now been going for 12 weeks and out of those 8 weeks has been under with the nightly curfew and 5km allowed movement range from home. Two weeks ago, were the first slight easings of the restrictions when the allowed outdoor time was doubled to two hours per day. Also, those living alone could have so called “single bubble” arrangement. In that it has been allowed to select another individual who you could visit even outside the 5km range. I already took advantage of it by visiting a colleague a week ago, which was nice change of daily routines. That ruling however requires that the household you are visiting, only can have that one person inside at that time. That would mean that if someone here wants to visit their parents, they must choose just one of them and the other one must leave the house for the duration of the visit.

From tomorrow the next steps of easing the restrictions are in effect, which for example removes the nightly curfew. We are ahead of the schedule of lowering the new daily infections with 14-day average of 22.1 as of today, because the criteria for this day was to have 30-50 daily infections in the 14-day average. The next step was supposed to be originally after four weeks but because the situation that is now moved forward to 19^th of October. If the 14-day average is then around 5 cases, the long-waited easing happens as it removes the limit of 4 reasons to leave home. After that I’m again able to have my next road trip. Well just going over 5 km outside of your home feels like an adventure after the 11 weeks of that limit. In marathon scale, we are currently on the 33.5 km mark with less than 10 km to go.

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As the summer has ended back in Finland and the autumn colours have filled the nature, the weather in Melbourne is starting to get warmer. Week ago, the temperature already went to 26°C one day. The spring can be seen in the trees that dropped the leaves in autumn as new ones are appearing. I think most trees are evergreen though as they didn’t change colour or drop the leaves. They are also warning about magpies attacking people in parks as they are defending their chicks. Even though they are the same named species of birds as in Finland and the colouring is black and white, their bird songs are much nicer than in Finland. They have different Latin names, but I guess the similar colouring and size is the reason for both being magpies. After this chapter I added bird songs of both magpies for comparison (offered by Wikipedia). I can’t wait to get into the nature here as the summer gets closer. Even though I visited several trails in my first road trip, it was a wintertime so it’s should be more filled with life the next time.

I have been in down under now for about 8 months and I’m still planning to see this work assignment through. So far, I haven’t even scratched the surface about what I want to do and see here. But as the situation is getting better (for second time), I’m still optimistic that I get to cross most of the to-do and to-see list before ending the adventure. They just mentioned in the news that it might be possible to open the trans-Tasman travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand by Christmas. Of course, it’s still unsure that will it be open only for citizens and permanent residents of both countries, but it would be just dumb to not accept us temporary residents to spend money in the suffering traveling business. The work assignment was originally for one year but depending on when I get to spend my vacations accrued this year, the return to Finland might be somewhere between March and June next year. Originally, I was supposed to be two weeks ago in Finland for a week, but life doesn’t always go as planned, especially the year 2020.