Items
Creator is exactly
Margaret Chambers
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2022-02-04
HIST30060: Canberra Test Centre
This photograph depicts negative popular responses towards public messaging about the pandemic. On the Canberran road sign, a sticker reads, “The media is (the virus) lying to you. Turn off your tell lie vision.” At the bottom of the corner, a sign points towards a PCR test centre. This photograph was taken in February 2022. It is likely that this sticker was posted by a Freedom Rally protester. In January 2022, the Freedom Rally attracted thousands of protesters to Canberra in protest of the government’s response to the pandemic. The “Canberra Convoy” drove from all parts of the country to protest in front of parliament house. While the protesters’ concerns primarily revolved around the vaccination mandate and media censorship, the movement evolved to include all manner of political concerns, including housing affordability, the rising mental health crisis, religious freedoms et cetera. This photograph illustrates how the government measures and media coverage of the pandemic were not universally accepted but rather hotly contested in some places. The Freedom Rally, for example, attracted over 100,000 people to the nation’s capital. The photograph further shows popular anger towards the media coverage of the pandemic. The Australian Broadcasting Channel in particular attracted the ire of the anti-vaccination and anti-mandate movement for contributing towards increased fear of the virus and support for the vaccine. -
2020-08-07
HIST30060: Food Relief Centre Queue
This is a photograph taken of a queue to enter a food relief centre in South Melbourne in August 2020. The queue was several hundred metres long. As lockdowns began to ravage Melbourne, most businesses were forced to close, resulting in many people losing their jobs. Where this food relief centre had services around 100 people at the start of 2020, this number swelled to over 2000 by the height of the pandemic. Among the most vulnerable demographics affected by the pandemic restrictions were international casual workers and students. Where citizens were eligible to apply for various emergency relief payments, such as Job Keeper or Job Seeker, migrants did not have access to these resources. This food bank only required a form of identification to register the recipients. Several pandemic related restrictions are shown in this picture. The recipients are socially distanced, standing on makeshift markings spaced 1.5 metres apart by government restriction. They wear masks; a government requirement both indoors and outdoors at the height of the pandemic in Victoria. The food bank volunteers wear neon orange high-visibility vests and hold QR codes for the recipients to register on their own devices. I have volunteered at the food relief centre since 2020, performing the same role as the volunteers in the photograph. Where mainstream historical narratives and media may focus on how the lockdowns affected citizens, it is important to remember how migrants too were affected by the pandemic and had little to know support from the Australian government. -
2020-08-18
HIST30060: Negative Test Result
This is a screenshot of a negative PCR test result from August 2020. At this time, test results would typically take 24 hours to process, with the government requiring that the patient isolate until they received the result of their test. I, like most residents in Melbourne, suffered a profound emotional impact from the bombardment of public messaging about the pandemic. The advertising campaigns by the state government as well as opinions expressed on social media suggested that a failure to follow health protocols would result in tremendous negative effects. For example, failing to get tested could be the reason that someone's grandmother died from exposure to the pandemic. With such high stakes attached to my everyday behaviour and compliance to health orders, whenever I felt even slightly unwell, it would trigger a barrage of intense anxiety. The health order to self-isolate for a week after a positive test result, as well as the Andrews governments' policy of reopening contingent on the number of positive test results in the community, further increased anxiety around any form of cold symptoms. To the day, this image evokes feelings of fear and relief. Something so mundane as a text message represented either a ticket to freedom or a binding health order. In this case, the text message represented a reassurance that my sickness was the regular, boring sort, and that I was not an accidental killer of grandmothers. It represents the use of everyday technology, both sophisticated and mundane, in the pandemic response.