Regional communities are taking creative approaches to maintaining a sense of social cohesion in a world of social distancing.
The Fish Creek Tea Cosy Festival in South Gippsland is embracing a virtual future.
While organisers have cancelled some elements of the May event, an exhibition of tea cosy creations will go ahead, albeit online.
Now it's called Tea Cosies in Isolation — An e-Cosy Exhibition, and dozens of participants are preparing their entries.
It's one example of a creative solution to the current social distancing environment.
Marge Arnup, one of the organisers of the Fish Creek Tea Cosy Festival, said the show had to go on.
"We have people contacting us from all over Australia about our festival," she said.
"When we heard we had to cancel, we thought, how do we stay true to all of those people who have madly worked on wonderful, creative ideas?"
The organisers are planning to launch what they are calling an e-cosy exhibition, filming the exhibited tea cosies — which will include some last-minute, coronavirus-inspired entries.
"The public response has just been overwhelming," Ms Arnup said.
"People have been laughing and joking about sitting with a cup of tea and checking out the tea cosies.
"We thought we could add a new element to the festival, which is to send photos of their own tea cosies from home … and have a popular choice competition to crown the favourite."
Theatre in your pyjamas
Members of the Good Girl Song Project were gearing up to perform at a huge list of regional festivals until coronavirus came along.
"All of our big festival shows for the next four months have been cancelled," Penny Larkins said.
"We're barely hanging on at the moment."
Ms Larkins said virtual theatre was the best way to keep her income and passion alive.
"We want to use a rehearsal venue, stream our performance, and our audience can make donations as the streaming is happening," she said.
"We could have a constant feed of people chatting and reviewing us during the performance."
Ms Larkins said the forced isolation could potentially grow an audience.
"We've realised that some of the people that are our biggest fans are actually the people who find it hard to leave their house," she said.
"The silver lining to this is we could share our music to people in a wider form."
Plus, you could have a cultured theatre experience in your pyjamas instead of dressing up in your finery.
Visiting a virtual cafe
Tanya Rong from the Latrobe Healthy Assembly has helped set up a virtual cafe.
"We plan to have a coffee and a chat on a daily basis using the online platform Zoom," she said.
"It's important to have that human contact.
"Seeing that there are people on the other side of the screen … and seeing those physical cues and being able to smile and engage makes you feel a little less lonely."
