Items

• 
  2021-07-07

  Hosts break down after quarantined man’s mother passes away | Today Show Australia

  This is a heartbreaking story from Australia about a man who flew around the world to try to get to his dying mother, only to have the Queensland government block his way. So many people across the globe had to die alone without their loved ones because of this pandemic. Hospitals and governments need to come up with a safe system to allow for visitation of dying relatives during pandemics because, sadly, this will likely happen again in the future.
• 
  2020-06-08

  Australian Health Worker quote on managing patient load

  We're quickly trying to push patients out that could go to the ward so that we can get more patients in. This is hard work for us. Quote from Female aged 42, Intensive Care Nurse. Image created by the Health Worker Voices project: https://mspgh.unimelb.edu.au/healthworkervoices
• 
  2020-07-29

  Australian Health Worker quote on patients

  They have no one else with them. They're scared, they're frightened and it's very difficult. Quote from Female aged 52, Specialist Care Doctor. Image created by the Health Worker Voices project: https://mspgh.unimelb.edu.au/healthworkervoices
• 
  2020-07-07

  Australian Health Worker quote on reactions from patients' families

  We limited visiting completely, not just to patients with COVID 19, even the nicest families became really aggressive. Quote from Female aged 54, Intensive Care Nurse. Image created by the Health Worker Voices project: https://mspgh.unimelb.edu.au/healthworkervoices
• 
  2020-06-26

  Australian Health Worker quote on rapid system changes

  We had to make decisions on how to change systems quickly and implement them. Very optimistic that big changes could happen so quickly. Quote from Male aged 45, Rural Doctor. Image created by the Health Worker Voices project: https://mspgh.unimelb.edu.au/healthworkervoices
• 
  2020-06-26

  Australian Health Worker quote on workload

  It will have a devastating impact, health workers that work out here that are already struggling constantly burnout. Quote from Male aged 45, Rural Doctor. Image created by the Health Worker Voices project: https://mspgh.unimelb.edu.au/healthworkervoices
• 
  2020-08-14

  Australian Health Worker quote on comforting patients

  Giving someone a hug when they're feeling upset, that's my go to and now we're not allowed to do that. It breaks my heart. Quote from Female aged 30, Aged Care Nurse. Image created by the Health Worker Voices project: https://mspgh.unimelb.edu.au/healthworkervoices
• 
  2020-07-27

  Australian Health Worker quote on families

  It's really tough for families that need to see their loved one in their last few days and they just can't be there. I think that's really rough. Quote from Female aged 45, Intensive Care Nurse. Image created by the Health Worker Voices project: https://mspgh.unimelb.edu.au/healthworkervoices
• 
  2020-08-07

  Australian Health Worker quote on the health service

  The health service is unravelling. People are getting tired. Healthcare workers are getting tired and it's horrible. Quote from Female aged 58, Community Health Worker. Image created by the Health Worker Voices project: https://mspgh.unimelb.edu.au/healthworkervoices
• 
  2020-07-31

  Australian Health Worker quote on difficulties of Mask

  COVID is significantly affecting us in our personal lives as well. So it's not just something that we're managing at work. Quote from Female aged 43, Other Health Services. Image created by the Health Worker Voices project: https://mspgh.unimelb.edu.au/healthworkervoices
• 
  2020-08-17

  Jewish Melbourne: NCJWA (Vic) Covid taskforce response on child safety

  Information provided by NCJWA (Vic) to provide advise to community members on ensuring child safety during pandemic times.
• 
  2020-09-06

  Jewish Melbourne: NCJWA (Vic) Fathers Day during Covid Facebook post

  The NCJWA (Vic) posted on facebook for Fathers Day, reflecting on how fathers have coped during lockdown.
• 
  2020-09-08

  Jewish Melbourne: NCJWA (Vic) Golden Age club activities

  "Thank you, Kehilat Nitzan, for your friendship and support of our Golden Age Clubs. The Tikkun Olam Community of Kehilat Nitzan provides on an ongoing basis gift bags to the public house residents. Recently, in preparation for Rosh Hashanah, the members received from Kehilat Nitzan a special goodie bag which included a Sudoku book, hand cream, sweets and a honey cake, made by the Kehilat Nitzan volunteers. “Our Golden Age Club members and their families deeply appreciate the care and support they receive from the Kehilat Nitzan community. This is really touching” said Nellie Khoroshina, Golden Age Clubs Coordinator. Our Golden Age Clubs are going strong, providing much-needed emotional support and social connection to Holocaust survivors and war veterans. The members are gathered weekly via audio/video conferences in groups of fives. “These virtual meetings keep the participants informed and connected during COVID times” added Nellie."
• 
  2020-11-17

  Jewish Melbourne

  We had a beautiful celebration for my daughter's Batmitzvah that was not how we imagined or planned it to be. Despite the restrictions, we were blessed with a simcha that was overflowing with yiddishkeit, connection, Jewish history, music, family, love and tradition.
• 
  2020-09-08

  Victorian Isolation – HIST30060

  The second lockdown was an extraordinarily difficult time for Victorian citizens. Our social media feeds were filled with Australians and the international community celebrating their newfound freedom, whilst we were stuck at home, demoralised, and overwhelmed with the rising cases and deaths in our hometown. This article struck me because it was the only publication I saw in this time which accurately captured the loneliness and hopelessness that was felt throughout the state.
• 
  2020-08-31

  Jewish Melbourne: CSG - Check on your mates

  This is a post by Community Security Group (CSG), encouraging people to look out for each other: "Humans are social animals. We crave connection. As we spend more time in our homes, cut off from friends and family in a bid to stop the spread of the virus, the lack of physical touch can be mentally challenging. For people who live alone especially, this extended lack of contact may be particularly tough. But just because we’re physically distant from each other doesn’t mean we can’t still be emotionally close. Maintaining regular human connection is more important than ever as we navigate these difficult times."
• 
  2020-09-26

  Jewish Melbourne: Sassoon Yehuda Sephardi Synagogue - Yom Kippur message

  This is a video by Sassoon Yehuda Sephardi Synagogue of a "2020/5781 Pre-Yom Kippur inspiring message from Rav and Rabbanit Hassan, for our community."
• 
  2020-03-18

  "Take My Hand" - A Song Written On March 18th About COVID

  HIST30060 This is a very rough demo of a song I wrote and recorded on the 18th of March 2020, right near the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic. Moreso than anything else, this song expresses my emotions about COVID come March 2020, namely the fear, insecurity, and dread. The first verse draws on the imagery of the empty University campus, and of the two-week quarantine period. The second verse includes a reference to an image I remember seeing from Wuhan, where a dying COVID patient was wheeled out of the hospital to view a final sunrise, as well as the videos from Italy of people in quarantine singing together from their balconies. The chorus is about the paradox of wanting physical contact but being afraid of breaching social distancing. The bridge references St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes and hospitals, drawing on those feelings of hopelessness about the rapidly degrading pandemic situation.
• 
  2020-03-12

  COVID-19 Productivity Plan

  HIST30060: A ‘COVID-19 Productivity Plan’ in the making. In the early days of the pandemic, my girlfriend and I were excited about entering lockdown. An eventual lockdown felt inevitable in mid-March, so we sat down at our local café to plan all the things we hoped to achieve. The plan reflects the sense of novelty and strange excitement many experienced in the beginning.
• 
  2029-03-25

  Ormond College Student Update, 25 March 2020

  HIST30060 This is an email from March 2020, describing the introduction of strict new COVID restrictions at Ormond College, the largest residential College at UniMelb. As the document describes, this meant that any students who remained on campus went into full "lock-in" -- they were not allowed to leave at all, not even for essential shopping as per the rest of the state. This caused many students to flee campus and end up in unstable short-term accomodation, rentals, and sublet's (myself included). This email goes some way to demonstrate the impact of COVID on specific communities such as residential colleges, and on students more broadly. Beyond this, it's personally impactful to me because this email signalled that I had less than a day to make the decision between being homeless and remaining locked-in at College. Like many, I chose homelessness and eventually ended up in a sublet with friends-of-friends.
• 
  2020-10-17

  A Pandemic Through Bad Memes

  HIST30060, this is a personal text reflection on my experience in the pandemic complemented by internet memes
• 
  2020-07-30

  satirical social commentary on state border closures and restrictions.

  This satirical article by the Betoota Advocate is a social commentary on varying experiences of the coronavirus pandemic in different Australian states, specifically Victoria and Queensland, which speaks to my own experiences as someone who has lived in both states during Melbourne's second lockdown from July. The article mentions the general indifference or lack of sympathy towards Victorians, as NewsCorp and the general public have seen the second wave of cases in the southern state as being their own fault. This is something I noticed upon my return to Queensland in August, where the general rhetoric surrounding Victoria and their Premier Daniel Andrews' handling of the high number of cases in the state tended to be divisive. I had never heard of the term 'Dictator Dan' before returning to Queensland and people I knew were calling Victorians 'Mexicans', which I put down to the monopolisation that Murdoch media has over Queensland news. I saw these sentiments turn to sympathy as stage 4 lockdown set in, as Queenslanders realised the negative effects lockdown was having on Victorians. This also differed from the indifference I noticed when I first came back to Queensland, where most people seemed to have forgotten what lockdown was like and were living like everything was back-to-normal. As someone who experienced both lockdowns in Melbourne, as well as relatively normal life in Queensland, I definitely did not take the ability to travel, go out and see friends and family for granted, whilst also retaining deep sympathy towards everyone still in lockdown in Melbourne (which included many of my friends and some family). HIST30060.
• 
  2020-04

  Family facetime

  At the start of lockdown it became clear that my family would not be able to see each other for a while. Most of my family lives in Sydney, some of us live in Melbourne, regional Victoria and Canada. In response, my sister initiated a Coffey Family FaceTime every night at 6:30pm with whoever was available. However, this meant teaching my grandmothers how to use Facebook and how to start a call. More than 8 months later and both my grandmothers still can’t turn their video on without direction and also can’t start Facebook calls. This call kept us together when we felt far away. Celebrating father’s day and birthdays and anniversaries on FaceTime made some moments more memorable and some feel more lonely. Face timing each other was fun until there was a family dinner in Sydney and you couldn’t leave the state. However, there were fun moments, stirring up my parents dogs by yelling “walkies” or “dindins” and then leaving the call, FaceTiming on empty trams and using the weird face effects to confuse my grandmother about who’s camera was whose. The call gave structure to the days spent inside and caused me to talk to my grandmothers and extended family more about the current world events. HIST30060
• 
  2020-05-01

  Street art in South Melbourne

  Outside my work the council of Port Phillip commissioned an artwork on Coventry Street South Melbourne by Bridgette Dawson who goes by Melbourne Murals. She remastered the renaissance creation of Adam masterpiece dedicating the work to physical distancing. This piece developed throughout March when social distancing was fairly new and the mural demonstrates the way social distancing impacted everyday life. During this period the council of Port Phillip organised an initiative for property owners to register their buildings to have murals painted on the exterior. This would give artists work during a hard financial time and would deter graffiti. Port Phillip council also created a map for viewing their new street art installations, encouraging new walking paths when life seemed on repeat. I see this artwork nearly everyday and customers continually comment on it and smile about it. It’s a reflection of how COVID changed our lives and the spaces around us in South Melbourne.
• 2020-05-01

  COVID influenced street art

  During the first lockdown in Melbourne the community in Southbank bonded through new COVID influenced street art. On the side of my apartment building on City Road, Southbank street artist Peter Seaton also known as CTO Art was commissioned to paint a piece over some recent graffiti. He titled the street art ‘trapped in a third dimension’, he described that COVID19 had caused fear and panic, which are the lowest emotions and he wanted people to experience and remember the feeling of love. This painting reflects intimacy during coronavirus and ideas of not being able to touch one another.
• 
  2020-08-26

  Grandpa & Gracie

  I’ve missed my Grandpa terribly, but we’ve able to bond during the pandemic through a continuous email exchange concerning my dog. I’ll send him photos, and he’ll help me conspire ways to keep her safe from falling in our pool. We’ve been able to connect through our shared love of Gracie, even though we haven’t seen him or my Grandma for months. It’s been one of the most fulfilling experiences I’ve had in this plague year, especially because Grandpa is mostly deaf and can’t communicate well in person. It’s interesting how technology (and Gracie!) have facilitated connection between us. For a nonagenarian, he’s probably more proficient with technology than I am!
• 
  2020-03-23

  Casual Racism Towards Ethnic Asian Diaspora

  This is a short video where I asked my friend Nikko Guan to share her experiences with casual racism toward ethnic Asians at the beginning of the pandemic here in Melbourne, Australia. There was a lot of panic and misinformation surrounding the coronavirus, and a lot of people attributed the origin of the virus (Wuhan China) with the cause of the virus and harboured distrust toward anyone who looked remotely foreign or Asian. Some of my friends and acquaintances who were Asian but not even Chinese also reported similar experiences. It's especially pertinent as this also affected Asian diaspora who were born in Australia and may have never even been overseas, but are judged purely on their appearance. My friend in the interview had not been to China, or anywhere internationally, for many years. It's important that a global disaster that is the result of natural catastrophe isn't judged on malice for political or racial prejudices.
• 
  2020-10-06

  Fear, Fiction, and Facebook

  (HIST30060) Content warning: suicide mention. As the pandemic has developed over the course of the year and Victoria has progressed through lockdowns, a Facebook friend of mine from high school has taken to discussing COVID-19 extensively. She posts very regularly (on average between 20 and 30 times per day) with commentary on the pandemic, ranging from sanctimonious to outraged, sharing posts from conspiracy groups, pandemic-denying politicians, and other Facebook users that downplay the existence or severity of the virus. The series of unsubstantiated claims and recurrent mentions of ‘breaking news’ from various unnamed rogue health workers results in some of her Facebook friends querying her content and questioning the validity of her sources. When they reply to her posts, her Facebook friends often attempt to share news articles and updates from verified, fact-checked sources, but when this happens she talks past them, avoids the question, engages in a range of logical fallacies, or outright denies the validity of the information with which she’s been presented. In particular, she received significant backlash from her friends when she shared a post about the Australian suicide rate in 2020, crediting an alleged (untrue) increase directly to the lockdowns: one friend responded to say ‘I’m swiftly losing respect for you and the misinformation you keep posting.’ Earlier in the year, her posts gained greater traction among her Facebook friends: people would react to them, comment with information, speculation, or gentle disagreement; by now (November), the engagement her posts receive has dwindled down to the occasional like, but usually nothing more than that. Seeing her posts when I checked Facebook began to remind me of a conversation I’d had with my housemate about the role of fear and a desire for control behind belief in conspiracy theories; namely that these belief systems might bring warped comfort on some level. In situations that are scary, believing in some nameless, faceless ‘them’, or connecting with other people who claim to have secret insider information hidden from the general public, might help ease a feeling of powerlessness by believing someone is in control. I would allege her Facebook posts stem at least in part from fear, which I feel is more than understandable given an underlying experience for many people this year has been a deep, semi-constant sense of paralytic uncertainty. While I empathise with this, and genuinely feel compassion towards her for what she’s going through, I can’t help but think the way she has responded to these feelings is irresponsible at best, and dangerous at worst. I find her advocacy of the importance of independent research and critical thinking approaches irony, as the ‘research’ she describes appears to consist of discussing factually incorrect information with other scared people who are also searching for stability and predictability. I don’t begrudge her the fear she feels in any capacity, nor do I want to pass judgement on how others cope with this experience, but I can’t help feeling that this does more harm than good; I worry it proliferates false information, and further demoralises those who read it. While individual conjecture, ideas, philosophising, and critical thinking are absolutely necessary and a healthy degree of scepticism is vital when reading anything, I believe there is a degree of responsibility one assumes to check, even cursorily, that the content they’re sharing has some basis in fact, especially in instances like this where people are quite literally dying. While the experience of the pandemic is undoubtedly having a severe effect on her, I feel irritated reading her advocacy of things that will objectively place other people at risk of illness. It seems to me insensitive to spread deliberately divisive misinformation, given there are people who are assume risk every day when they go to work (even in a country that has implemented measures to control the spread of the disease, when many countries overseas have not). I worry about the broader social repercussions of the division and polarisation that misinformation contributes to, both in the case of COVID-19 and in other contexts. When I look over the things she’s been posting on Facebook, I feel overwhelming pity and compassion for what she is going through individually, and what everyone in Victoria is undergoing as a collective. I understand that everyone is coping with an extremely stressful and emotionally taxing experience and is attempting to manage as well as they can. I’ve seen parallels drawn between the COVID-19 pandemic and previous pandemic disease outbreaks and major historical events in general, and the comfort people derive from a sense of shared experience during difficulty. I think in part the pandemic has cemented in my mind the confronting fact that being alive is just living through a series of major historical events; that history is not something that has happened to other people, in other places, at other times, but is happening now and will continue to happen, over and over. While this is incredibly confronting to think about and dredges up an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness at times, it seems to me by looking at both the past and the present that people working to mutually support each other make upheaval, fear, and uncertainty much easier to bear.
• 
  2020-04

  ANZAC Day 2020

  Like many families we participated in a dawn service unlike any previously held this year. As gatherings and official ceremonies were cancelled people looked for alternate ways to commemorate ANZAC day. Across the country there was a movement to participate in a unified but socially distanced way. Lighting a small candle and observing the minute silence made us all feel a little more connected during the height of the Sydney lockdown.
• 
  2020-11-08

  The Bondi COVID-19 Testing Centre

  HIST30060 To accomodate the huge numbers of people needing COVID-19 tests, a screening clinic was erected in the Bondi Beach carpark. The first time I saw it, I didn’t really know what to think. Of course I was pleased, and proud, that Sydney was creating free and open spaces to test as many people for COVID-19 as possible. But seeing the clinic in Bondi, against the sunny beach, felt surreal. Even after months of living with the pandemic there’s still something indescribably strange about such a familiar place having to adapt to COVID-19.
• 
  2020-09-03

  A hoopless basketball ring

  This is an image I took of a basketball court at my local park that had had its basketball hoop unscrewed. As I stood there and looked at it, I realised the weight of the pandemic in terms of its social impact.
• 
  2020-07-20

  A Woman’s* Best Friend

  This represents what friendship means to me. My dog is my best friend and was the best supporter I could ask for during the 8 months Melbourne was in lockdown.
• 
  2020-07-16

  Ten Days of Self-Isolation

  The following is a reflection on my experience in COVID-19 testing and self-isolation, after returning to my home country Bahrain from Australia, where I am a student. Upon arriving in Bahrain International Airport, travellers are taken aboard buses into a giant white tent-structure. Here, my temperature was taken. Then, I was escorted to one of the desks (mostly staffed by young volunteers) where I give my personal details, including where I intend to spend my 10 days of self-isolation (the Government of Bahrain had only recently reduced the requirement from 14 days). After that, I had the COVID-19 PCR test taken (quick but unpleasant nose swab). The results are published via the “Be Aware” app within 24 hours. It was, thankfully, negative. I was also given an electronic bracelet that acts as a tracker, to ensure that I am where I say I would be. I am driven from the airport by my brother, it was decided that he would pick me up because he had recently caught the virus himself, and so, supposedly he would have developed some immunity. Spending 10 days in one’s bedroom was as boring as one might expect. My main source of entertainment would be, as it turned out, Ancient Rome. I was still taking a university subject, which was moved online the week prior due to renewed restrictions in Melbourne after COVID-19 infections spiked in the State of Victoria. I did however have to get up at 3:00 in the morning to attend classes! I did, moreover, end up gaining about 2 kilograms of weight in those 10 days. The whole experience of travel and self-isolation in the age of COVID-19 is just one example of how simple aspects of our lives (travel, privacy, education, exercise, social life etc.) were changed so drastically by the pandemic. Everything would somehow be more complicated. This reflection was submitted as part of the HIST30060 Making History project at the University of Melbourne.
• 
  2020-03-17

  Empty Pasta Shelves

  When Australia first got hit with news of how devastating Covid-19, many people went onto a panic-buying frenzy, stockpiling non-perishable essential items. This is a photo taken at my local Woolworths with the pasta shelves completely gutted. Toilet paper, rice, hand sanitizer, yeast and hand soap were equally cleared out. Some stores went as far as to post signs out the front of their stores stating "NO TOILET PAPER AVAILABLE". As a young person who lives away from home, my regular diet consists of a lot of pasta (also because pasta is delicious). During this time I ended up eating a lot more vegetable soups, because ironically fresh fruit and vegetables supplies weren't particularly affected by the virus or panic buying as they wouldn't last in an impending apocalypse. It took about a month for grocery stores to re-configure their supplies, and the for the panic to die down slightly. When this first happened, the essential items were piled high front and centre at the entrance of the store: I walked in to this same Woolworths one day with a tower of 24-pack toilet pack stacked as tall as I was. This object shows how crowds can react in unexpected and instinctually self-defensive ways when threatened with a large and sweeping danger. HIST30060.
• 
  2020-10

  Small joys - HIST30060

  This collection of photographs were all taken during Melbourne's second-wave of Covid-19, towards or right at the end of our severe lockdown. After a fairly miserable winter and hundreds of cases each day, the light at the end of the tunnel was often pretty hard to see - but when the announcement finally came that it was safe to start opening up, it coincided with some of the most beautiful spring weather we'd seen. The local shops on the Mornington Peninsula started sharing a countdown until we could visit them again and it felt a bit like being a kid at Christmas.
• 
  2020-03-21

  (HIST30060) Empty Footy Games and Empty Supermarket Shelves

  (HIST30060) As an avid footy fan, it was upsetting and very strange to see the 2020 AFL season starting without being able to attend the game at the MCG, or there be anyone in the seats when watching it on tv. This post reflects this strange moment in AFL history, but also the coinciding rush on supermarkets, particularly toilet paper, leaving lots of shortages and empty supermarket shelves. I still don't understand why seemingly everyone in Victoria and Australia decided they needed to stock up on toilet paper, but it was definitely an aspect of a very strange and stressful period at the start of the pandemic.
• 
  2020-03-23

  (HIST30060) 2020 in a nutshell courtesy of The Office

  (HIST30060) This video was posted about the time in March when most of the world started going into lockdown and Covid-19 cases were increasingly rapidly everyday, particularly in Europe at that time. At uni, we'd just started online classes as Victoria went into lockdown. The video is great at demonstrating the chaos that existed as the situation became a global pandemic, when nobody knew what was going to happen the next day or really how to deal with what was occurring.
• 
  2020-10-14

  Reflections on Exchange and the Pandemic

  I wrote this article in October 2020, 7 months after I was forced to return home early from my university exchange semester in Edinburgh. Shared with my friends on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, the article put it into words thoughts and feelings that had been on my mind for the previous 7 months. In it, I tried to capture how my last few days in Edinburgh felt: the rapid pace of COVID closures, the sudden goodbyes, the panic about travel plans and illness. Writing the article was an enormously cathartic process, and helped me process the confusing mix of emotions that I'd felt since returning to Melbourne. It is, far and away, the most complete summary of my experience of the pandemic that I can offer.
• 
  2020-10-04

  Jewish Melbourne: Shana Tova and Yom Kippur event from NIF

  New Israel Fund emailed their email list in order to wish them a shana tova, and to send details of an event for Yom Kippur, as well as general information about what the organisation had been doing
• 
  2020-09

  Jewish Melbourne: NCJWA Elul Stories

  The National Council of Jewish Women of Australia compiled and shared "24 personal stories from Australian Jewish Women About Covid-19 and High Holidays"
• 
  2020-10

  Jewish Melbourne: 'Thoughts on Isolation' by Stan Marks

  Stan Marks, who is 91 years old, reflects on living during the pandemic, and also shares a letter he wrote to share with the students in Year 12 at Brighton Grammar, his old school
• 
  2020-10-28

  ‘I’m here for you’

  2020 is a difficult year, especially for someone like me staying alone in foreign lands. What frustrated me was not only the difficulties in life, but also loneliness and lost. I have no roommate in Melbourne. Therefore, after the 5km travel ban was issued, I rarely contact with the outside world. Not only that, many of my friends choose to defer their studies and stayed in their mother country due to the plague so I gradually lost contact with them. In this case, speak to my classmates on the tutorial became almost the only way for me to communicate with the outside world. I am not ready to face this situation, and these sudden changes made me so depressed. Social distancing between men made me feel ignored and isolated, and I even considered about postponing my studies. Until a few days ago, I found some cards (as in the photo) from my apartment’s common zone. On the front page of the card there is ‘I’m here for you’, and residents could leave their contact information on the card to people who want to make new friends. I take one of the cards and left my message. Although I have not contacted that person so far, I can feel the kindness from strangers, and the support there makes me believe that everything will be fine. #HIST30060
• 
  2020-09-10

  Art recreations for R U OK? Day, St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne

  As part of RU OK? Day activities for staff in this challenging year, hospital teams were invited to submit a team photo on the internal social media network. The Palliative Care team responded with a compilation recreating famous art works. The Paul Getty Museum popularized the phenomenon of recreating famous art works with a handful of household items earlier in the year.
• 
  2020-06-11

  Tunnels of Love art installation project, St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne

  Like many hospitals, St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne has a network of tunnels connecting campus buildings. The tunnels are customarily unadorned and very utilitarian in nature. The hospital's Art Curator decided to brighten them up to provide some light and cheer to staff and patients during Melbourne's COVID first wave. She called on former artists-in-residence to create thank you posters and collaborated with other staff to create works for themed tunnel sections including "Poet's Corner", "Archives Alcove" and "Pets in Iso". A straight section of the tunnels was termed "Avenue of Honour" and bore individual thank yous acknowledging each hospital department. The entire project was called the "Tunnels of Love" and its headline image (pictured) was a heart collage the Art Curator devised from photographs of flowers and plants she had taken during garden walks. There has been lots of amazing feedback to the project. It has provided a boost to the spirits of many who transit through the tunnels on a daily basis and the installation continues to evolve.
• 
  2020-03-13

  Plans Drastically Changed

  I was on exchange in Edinburgh in the first half of 2020, and due to return to Melbourne at the end of June. As borders began to close and Australian government travel advice changed, it became apparent that I'd have to return home some months early. This text exchange with my mother is the first time I flagged my intention to leave early, and captures the rapid pace at which events and plans were changing. HIST30060
• 
  2020-03-13

  The First Bomb Dropped

  I was on exchange in Edinburgh in the first half of 2020, and was forced to return home early because of COVID-19. These messages show 3 of my friends announcing in a Facebook group chat that they were heading home to Austria, which came as a huge surprise to the rest of us in the group. This was a sad, confusing, disorienting moment, which these messages demonstrate. HIST30060
• 
  2020-10-18

  Care after 5km

  A friend of mine had a rough week. She lives down the coast, well out of my 5km play pen (the distance we Melbournians can travel from home). The phone calls are fine, but can be draining and don't replace a supportive hug. Feeling a bit helpless as a friend, I put together an hour of music I thought she'd find comforting. Diversifying the kinds of connections we keep up has been relieving in that way. Low pressure interaction, much like spending time in person when it is relaxed, calm, and conversation will bounce off stimuli in the world, is hard to replicate digitally. I've really stepped up my playlist game these days. She loved it. HIST30060
• 
  2020-09-12

  Schofferhofer

  These two photos are of a glass beer bottle from a Belgian Beer Cafe. One of my Dad's mates knows the guy who owns it and although the cafe is in Malvern and the CBD, my Dad's mate has been helping him deliver them around Carlton/Fitzroy. Dad was getting them every week and he bought me one the other week so I could see what it tasted like. It was beautiful, rich and hoppy. We changed to Peronis after and it just wasn't the same. Dad kept bugging me about how much it cost and I told him I'd send him money but he didn't want a bar of me. When I spoke to Mum she said she told him that he wasn't buying me any food any more since I moved out, we aren't catching up for meals or coffee or anything, the least he can do is buy me beer. Dad likes to have everyone in the same place and I think he was flat I eventually moved out, especially when it's so hard to catch up at the moment, but being able to to share this together, even if we are apart, was comforting.
• 
  2020

  Jewish Melbourne - My Two Lockdown Experiences - Day by Day

  I shared my thoughts, experiences and feelings: my family and me in lockdown. In both lockdown #1 and lockdown #2, in daily blog posts over many weeks. Many of the stories include Jewish-life aspects.
• 
  2020-09-20

  Jewish Melbourne Rosh Hashanah in the time of covid

  Our Neighbours offered to blow the shofar for the street. A few Jewish families live on our street in Balaclava. We all gathered in the street, All still and all connected by the mitzvah of hearing the shofar. It was a very special feeling. I felt the need to document this extraordinary event, this moment in history. In this time when so many of us are disconnected this moment of togetherness felt precious. Shofar, Rosh Hashanah, community, connected, isolation, mask, generosity, neighbor, listening, Mitzvah, covid moment, improvising, Balaclava, outside, togetherness