The title refers more on the long lockdown rather than the actual season. The winter as a season here has felt more like a long late autumn in Finland. The lockdown finally ended last Wednesday after 111 days in stage 4 restrictions. The four reasons to leave home was removed and retail could open again, and we can now eat in restaurants. The previous Monday also was the first so called donut day, which means zero new cases in the last 24 hours. We ended up with double donut as also Tuesday had zero new cases. Two weeks ago, the 5km allowed range from home was extended to 25km so basically for exercising I haven’t had the need to think about those limits. Although it restricted more my bike rides and my bike has a flat tire, so I haven’t taken the opportunity to do long bike rides yet. Also, the 2-hour daily limit on the time outside was scrapped at that time and they allowed golfing again. Now I just need to buy all the golf gear since my set is back in Finland.
Next huge step is coming up in one week, when the range limit from home will be scrapped and they plan to open the border between metropolitan Melbourne and the rest of the Victoria state. It means that after those easings I can again finally do another road trip. We are in a good place at this point as today the 14-day rolling average of new daily cases in Melbourne is at 2.2 and the whole state has only 61 active cases. So, we are finally getting our freedom of movement back while the situation is very much reversed in Finland and especially in rest of the Europe. One thing that will stick at least for the rest of the year is the mandatory masks in Victoria. Also, it is still unclear when the other states will open their borders to Victoria. One of my end goals during my stay in down under is a vacation in New Zealand. Currently the travel bubble between the countries is a one-way type where New Zealanders can travel to Australia without quarantine, but they still must have that 2-week quarantine when they go back home.
Since my last post I have now an end date to my stay in down under. I managed to negotiate a few months extension to my original one-year job assignment contract. It means that I have now exactly six months to have my adventures down under. The way that this year has been going, the extension was very important to even be able to see other places than this state. End of January would have come so fast with the last month being kind of needed for preparing the departure. I have quite many items I need to sell that I won’t bring back home. The end of April is quite good timing wise as the autumn here is changing into winter and the summer is just about to start in Finland at that time.
In my last post I mentioned the magpies and their swoop attacks in springtime. Well of course a few weeks ago I had my first experience with one. Just 200 metres away from home during one of my runs I first heard a loud flap sound. The next swoop I saw from the corner of my eye. Luckily, it didn’t make contact and gave up after 20 metres. The nesting season usually ends by November, so maybe I don’t have to watch out for them anymore. That wasn’t the only case though. Just over a week ago I walked to the same park I had the first close call. Then I found a note there that warned about the magpie. Of course, after I had read the note, most likely the same individual again swooped me.
That same day I also had some other excitement as the building fire alarm started going off around noon. This time it wasn’t announced to be a test run, so of course everybody had to evacuate the building. And as usual the elevators shouldn’t be used during evacuation, so I experienced the stairs 21 floors down the first time. The next day and couple of following days I felt the downclimb in both of my calves. Too bad those stairs can’t be used outside of evacuations as it would be great exercise. The cause of the fire alarm ended up being most likely one misfortunate driver who forgot how high his cargo in the car was. A sprinkler or one of the pipes was broken in the garage and water was pouring out.
Possible culprit of the fire alarm on top of the ramp with free shower next to it. 
Local way to do street powerlines “through” trees
Hopefully for the following blog posts I have some actual experiences to share instead of being partly a corona status update. Until then stay safe out there.
Jone's adventures Down Under 