Darwin, a town 24 hours ago swelling with sun-chasing tourists, has woken to the silence of locked down streets.
When southern cities brace for winter, the Top End of Australia enjoys its peak tourism boom during the annual dry season.
On a typical Sunday in the dry, cloudless 30-degree days provide the backdrop for swarming city bars, buzzing restaurants and packed-out markets on Darwin's famous Mindil Beach.
But the tourists who have flocked to the Top End had a very different Sunday when lockdown hit the Greater Darwin region.
By 2:00pm, the city was mostly deserted.
In the hours before, an eery chaos had taken hold as the panic buying began.
There was much to consider: School holidays commence today in the Northern Territory, and Territorians and tourists are legally allowed to buy and launch fireworks in public this coming Thursday for Territory Day celebrations.
The Chief Minister, however, has said he is unsure whether cracker night will go ahead.
Long queues formed at supermarkets, and inside them, stuffed trollies topped with toilet rolls stood scattered around the check-out.
The influx of shoppers caused a rare traffic jam on Darwin's usually free flowing city streets.
By Sunday evening, the rush had died down, and the police were happy with what the Commissioner described as "a significant calm" that had fallen across the Greater Darwin region.
Only 24 hours before and in the preceding months, the action in the city, according to the small talk of giddy locals walking around town, was as busy as it had ever been.
With international travel off the cards, and a reputation as a place long free of COVID restrictions and the threat of an outbreak, the Northern Territory has been at the top of the list for many domestic tourists.
Since pubs reopened last June, Territorians are often reminding each other of their relative good fortune during the pandemic.
Today they wake instead with concern and anxiety.
There has not yet been an official recorded case of community transmission in the NT.
But the Chief Minister is warning that could no longer be the number by the time health authorities finish their contact tracing in response to the latest outbreak which began in a Central Australian mine.
By Sunday, the outbreak had grown to six cases, four of which have been recorded in the Northern Territory.
One of those cases flew from the mine to Darwin before travelling home to Palmerston on Friday.
On Sunday, the Chief Minister told residents in Greater Darwin to brace for more cases, which could extend the lockdown period.
"We are expecting more cases and we aren't expecting them to be as clear as the new cases this morning," Mr Gunner said.
If more cases are discovered, then residents in Greater Darwin, and across the Northern Territory, could be in for even more upending consequences to their lives.
"There is a much stronger chance that any new cases will have exposure sites, which makes the job of tracing and testing them much bigger," Mr Gunner said.
