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  2024-06-18

  Handwashing @ the National Records of Scotland

  It is summer 2024, I am visiting Edinburgh, Scotland for a study abroad class with ASU online MA history students. Today, I am working at the National Records of Scotland. As I visited the loo before I headed upstairs to research, I noticed this sign reminding staff and the public to continue washing their hands to reduce the spread of COVID-19. I hope that none of our students/staff get COVID while here and that it is a mild strain if they do. It feels like a phantom on the past, but one that could certainly reappear unexpectedly.
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  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.
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  2020-03-18

  Farewell to Edinburgh

  I was on exchange in Edinburgh in the first half of 2020, and was forced to return home to Melbourne 3 months early. This was an incredibly sad and confusing time, where so many of my plans and dreams for the rest of exchange were scuppered. Things moved at a breakneck pace. My first exchange friend decided to leave Edinburgh on the 12th March, and by the 18th March I was flying home to Melbourne, having made dozens of rushed goodbyes in the previous few days. This object is a farewell post I made on Instagram, with 10 photos with my friends in Edinburgh. It sums up the mixed emotions I felt in those days - sadness, fondness, nostalgia, gratitude.
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  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
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  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
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  2020-09-03T12:24+10:00

  Billie's House

  Over the past few weeks, my girlfriend and I have been watching the Australian TV Drama 'Offspring.' When I say watching, I probably mean obsessing. With nothing to do we would watch a few episodes a day and finished all seven seasons in around a month. We like the show particularly because it is shot in and around Fitzroy, a place where we would often catch up with out mates over a beer or in the park at Edinburgh Gardens, I think seeing the characters in Offspring be able to go for a pint at the Union Club Hotel gave us some sort of comfort, and the pub is top of our first visit list when they open again. As we tried to create entertaining walks we would look for some of the houses they shoot in and this photo shows one I stumbled upon on a run, Billie's house in later seasons. Like any show you like to be where they were, becoming part of the story yourself, and particularly when there was not really much of a story in our lives in lockdown, it was good to be part of theirs. Now that we've finished all seasons and are adrift in endless Netflix menus, seeing the houses returns me to that place of belonging I had.