(Sunday lunchtime) We were walking down from out apartment Manly to run a few errands, when the Surf Life Savers came on the loud speakers to announce that Manly Beach was closing for public safety. Everyone was herded off the beach and guys on jet skis moved all the surfers in as well. I assume this all had something to do with the 500 person limit on public gatherings the government has imposed. But Shelly Beach is much smaller and remains open and the northern end of Manly Beach, which is always much less crowded, must be considered a separate beach, since it is also open. (As far as I can tell, the borderline is big drainage pipe that goes into the ocean and is hopefully just for stormwater.) This arbitrariness makes it all seems a bit nutty, but it is certainly a sign of the coming general lockdown. I wonder if we have missed the true reaction to the virus because we are living in Manly, with its surfer beach culture and huge cohort of young people. Most of our friends around Sydney have already started self-isolation.

After running our errands, Judie sat down at the outdoor tables of a sparsely populated local cafe for a light lunch and some white wine. It reminded us of the scene in “Casablanca” where Rick and Ilsa are sitting at an empty cafe in Paris, waiting for the Nazis to arrive and talking about taking the train to Marseilles. Do you all keep being reminded of apocalyptic songs and movies right now? Being in Australia, it is easy to think of “On the Beach”. Judie is humming “We’ll Meet Again”, from “Dr. Strangeglove”. I have the REM song “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” running in the background. Perhaps your songs are darker in America, where the bad times have already arrived? Here in Manly, the weather is beautiful, the beaches are lovely, people are still walking around, running errands and trying to live. But the storm clouds are on the horizon. Will the shut down come tomorrow or a week from tomorrow? You know that everything is about to change, perhaps permanently, but what do you do in the meantime?

(A few hours later) It is now clear that the Australian lockdown is imminent. As in the US, the Australian PM is blowhard nationalist buffoon who is unable to lead in this crisis, so the individual states are locking themselves down. It is a stupid way to react to a pandemic, but as Americans now know (unless they get all their information from Fox News), if the leader of your government is an incompetent narcissist, you just have to work around him. The NSW Premier announced today that all non-essential services will stop by Tuesday. Coincidentally, that is the day that we are leaving.