Melbourne based Mullingar native sees one person apart from family since March

Derek Smyth from Marlinstown has led an isolated existence since restrictions were first introduced in Australia in late March. The dad of two has only seen one other person apart from his family in seven months. A group operations manager for a nationwide firm, Derek says the lack of human contact is due to several factors.

“It’s a mixture of restrictions and circumstance – restrictions such as working from home if you can, which I can; being told not to go out unless you need to, and no visitors being allowed in homes. Also schools have been closed most of the time since March, so I been watching the kids and home schooling them, while also carrying out the day job.

“My wife works in age care, providing home care for the elderly, seven days a week. Therefore, she does all the essential traveling to the shops, and the two boys and I stay out of harm’s way to reduce the chances of passing on the virus to my wife and ultimately the elderly in her care.”

Derek, who left Ireland in 2000, says that lockdown has been harder on his two sons, than him and Lieu.

“My wife is still out about from a work perspective and has maintained some level of normality, putting aside the fear of getting ill or passing it on to others. While it has had an impact on me, I’m fortunate to still be working and being productive. However, it is very hard on the kids, mostly stripping them of seven months of friends and experiences.”

Derek says that he has found it hard “watching the young, the ill and the elderly having precious time stripped from them”.

“It pains me to think of the lost memories that have been taken from the youth. Likewise for those with terminal illness or who worked all their live to reach retirement and had the best part of a year stolen from them, unable to be with family, or travel.

“You also think of those who lost family and friends during this and have not been able to be with them at the end, as well as those who are struggling to keep their heads above water and the prospect of this not being over physically or financially for quite some time.”

Amid the gloom, there have been a few positives that Derek has gleaned since Covid-19 turned the world upside down.

“It’s been good spending more time with each other, seeing how well we adapted to a fairly sizeable shift in life and observing how the vast majority of people want to do the right thing by each other. Society is mostly good.”

Melbourne is the Australian city worst affected by Covid-19. Restrictions were first introduced in late March before a gradual reduction from mid-May as the number of cases fell.

However, a surge of infections in late July led to the reintroduction of the most severe measures to date on August 2, including a curfew from 8pm to 5am.

As cases have fallen, restrictions have been eased slightly, but travel is still restricted to within 5km of a person’s home and a curfew (9pm to 5am) is still in place.

At the time of writing, Australia, which has a population of just under 25m, had almost 27,400 recorded cases of the virus and 904 Covid-19 related deaths.

Victoria (population 6.7m) and its state capital Melbourne (population 4.9m) have accounted for more than 20,000 of the cases and more than 800 of the deaths.

When the surge in cases occurred in late July, Derek said that he found himself avoiding news bulletins.

“To be honest, I only listened to the news once in that period and it was soul destroying and I choose to ignore the daily spin / churn from there onwards.

“As of today, infection rates have reduced and the last few weeks have seen some minor relaxation of restrictions. So things are looking up. Also spring has sprung, so that is also good for the spirit.”

Derek believes that the state and federal governments in his adopted homeland have handled the crisis relatively well given the scale of the challenge.

“The governments made the best decision they could, based on what they knew – they’ve stuck the course and the reality is we will never know the alternative. I choose to believe the alternative would have been a lot worse.

“In saying that, there will be hard times ahead as individuals and as a society. I hope people can keep it together and that the governments will learn what could have been done better because this will happen again sooner rather than later.”

With his next trip home looking like it could be a long way off, Derek is grateful that he and his family made the long journey just after Christmas last year for a two-week break.

“We were very fortunate. I was planning to come home in April 2021 for my mother’s birthday – however its unlikely the restrictions in Australia will be lifted by then.”