Notes from the outback

‘DO NOT ENTER – 5 years imprisonment or a $63,000 fine’ said the sign posted at the entrance to Oodnadatta.

It was 2am and we’d just made an 800 kilometre dash from Alice Springs back to our home in outback South Australia, as COVID-19 fear swept across the country. In the two weeks we’d been in the Red Centre, coronavirus had gone from being an unfamiliar word to saturating news bulletins, dominating social media feeds and blanketing the ABC News page. Our world was at once expanding and narrowing.

We’d gone to Alice Springs in order for me to complete my final teaching practicum. This trip was supposed to be the last hoorah to a master’s degree that had been hard won; essays written while breastfeeding newborns, extensions begged for in desperate emails to tutors, placements interrupted by gastro outbreaks. You know the drill. But this was the sprint to the finish line. My husband Sam had taken time off from his job as the Oodnadatta police officer, three of our four children had been enrolled