The ACT government is allowing trick or treating to go ahead in Canberra in just over a week's time, but advising people to stick to their suburb and not venture into well-known "treat streets" that attract big crowds.
Canberrans have already begun decorating their homes ahead of Halloween on Sunday, October 31, but with lockdown restrictions only just starting to ease, it was not clear if trick or treating would be allowed.
But an ACT Health spokesperson said trick or treating could go ahead this year.
Increasingly popular in Australia, Halloween revolves around the tradition of children going from house to house asking for treats or else threatening a trick.
ACT Health says it could cancel trick or treating if circumstances change ahead of October 31.
"If the COVID-19 situation in the ACT changes, advice regarding Halloween may change in accordance with public health measures for the health and wellbeing of the community," they said.
"We will always put the wellbeing of the community at the forefront of any decision making."
ACT Health has some Halloween recommendations.
If you plan to trick or treat:
- Keep it local by staying in your suburb rather than going to well-known "treat streets" that attract big crowds.
- Stay in small household groups (for example, a supervising adult with children from the same household) rather than groups of young people together.
- Maintain physical distancing. Stay 1.5 metres away from people you don't live with.
- Only accept individually wrapped sweets or treat bags.
- Avoid sharing your treats with others from different households.
- Carry hand sanitiser with you and use it often, especially after touching common surfaces.
- If a particular house looks busy, move onto the next house or come back later.
If you plan to hand out treats:
- Keep the handling of treats to a minimum and use individually wrapped sweets or treat bags.
- Consider other ways of distributing treats away from your front door, such as hanging them individually on your fence, front gate, letterbox or front of your driveway. You could even grab a small table for the driveway or front yard and place the treat bowl on top with signage directing people where to grab the goodies.
- Offer hand sanitiser at your front gate or fence.
Please remember:
- If you have any symptoms over Halloween, stay home, don't receive visitors and get tested immediately.
- If you are isolating or quarantining, don't answer the door to trick-or-treaters.
- While facemasks are not mandatory for outdoors as of October 29, you can still choose to wear one.
Among those welcoming the green (orange?) light for trick of treating are the residents of Ammon Place in Kambah, who have been putting on a big street celebration for about three years.
"We kind of realised we were all doing Halloween but we were doing it separately. We thought, 'Maybe we should do it as a group and have a theme'," Jo Matthews said.
We have 'meetings' leading up to it where we sit around and open a bottle of wine and talk about Halloween for five minutes and then we carry on about anything else for the rest of the time."
