Born in 2020

If you were born in 2020, you arrived in the most extraordinary year in Australian living memory. It began with the bushfire crisis still raging: Black Summer, they were calling it, and the statistics were staggering — 186,000 square kilometres burned, an estimated three billion animals killed, smoke blanketing the eastern seaboard for months. Then in March, COVID-19 arrived and Australia shut down.

The international borders closed, the restaurants closed, the pubs closed, the footy season was suspended, the beaches were briefly closed. Australians were told to work from home, to stay home, to wear masks. The state premiers — particularly Daniel Andrews in Victoria — became the most important political figures in the country, their daily press conferences watched by millions.

Melbourne went into its second lockdown in July and would eventually spend 262 days in lockdown across 2020 and 2021, the longest of any city in the world. The Victorian border was closed. Queensland and Western Australia closed their borders too.

Australia, a country that had prided itself on its openness and its backpacker culture and its connections to the rest of the world, became, by necessity, an island again. The economy contracted for the first time in 29 years. And yet, through all of it: the backyard, the barbie, the bread-baking, the zoom calls with family in other states, the kindness of neighbours.

The country held.