My name is Marie, I’m 19. I’m french and currently living in Perth, WA, Australia.
Compared to most of the other countries, Australia might be one of the best places to be during this pandemic, especially on the West coast. Regional and inter-states travels are banned for almost 2 months now so the virus stops quickly being spread around the country. Most people are working from home for a bit more than one month and schools reopened last week. We are confined but I can tell that the lockdown in Perth and WA is way less strict than in Melbourne or Sydney because there’s less people here, more space and less cases. Cafe and restaurants are still open but for take away only. I always have the possibility to go to the beach to exercise with someone as long as the social distanciation is respected. In WA there has not been any new cases of COVID registered for a bit more than one week. From April 28th, 10 people meetings at home or on the beach and camping in some national park is allowed again.
I lost my previous job because of the shutdown due to the pandemic. It was a tough time to be honest , lots of unknowns especially because the flights got crazy expensive in one week, kept being cancelled and like everywhere in the world a kinda paranoia started being spread in the mindset.
I finally found a nice and warm place to stay, chill out and work until everything get less crazy and maybe back to normal at some stage. During the last weeks the situation reached a stabilization point in WA so people started being less scared of everything and talking about solutions to end up the lockdown step by step. Nobody is really talking about putting down any kind of travel restrictions yet, but the measures are going to be released within the following weeks in WA at least.
This pandemic puts myself on the ground and asks me to be patient. All my plans, like everyone on this planet, got ruined within a week and things are taking so much time now. I miss the freedom to go wherever i want whithout planning so much and knowing I can find a job on the way. Yet, I consider myself really lucky to live this pandemic in Perth because it might be one of the safest and nicest place to be at the moment.
I’m currently an aupair so I am really busy. Firstly I was taking care of the kids every week days from 8am to 4pm and before the schools reopened it began being really intense ; the kids were missing social interactions and being with someone else than their parents or me. Yet, as schools are reopened, things are getting easier and I have way more free time. I cook, read, help around, call my family and friends and drive to the beach meeting some mates on the weekends. So life’s pretty chilled.
I guess I am learning to enjoy life away from my social life and to fix my issues on my own. This quarantine gives me the time I had but didn’t really take to enjoy being on my own and realize it’s pretty cool to be able to have fun by yourself. It makes the moments shared with other people more intense. It also teaches me to not be afraid to be alone for a bit and stop freaking out about things i cannot control.
I read the french and australian news on my phone, listen to podcasts or watch videos sometimes. It’s pretty interesting to be on the over side of the world right now because i have the echoes from what is happening in Europe by my family and friends and realize how different the situation is here.
I’m planning to work on a farm to extend my visa. I still have to work 2 months in a regional area. I’m waiting for the responses from the farms at the moment. And then just go up north, go exploring. I’m really feeling like going on an adventure lately, hitting the road and going somewhere i don’t know. There’s so many fabulous places in Australia, you’re just a little piece of humanity surrounded by billions of years old red stones and the blue ocean. Yeah, this is what I’m gonna do then everything is over, when we are allowed to again. Hopefully I will put in practice all the things I’ve learnt lately about myself and how important it is to be relax in this life. Being worried is not so productive most of the time.
Do your best, do everything you can do and then, just wait, just be patient, and you’ll see everything will work out. You’ll be ok.
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