Tourists hotspots in Australia were packed with people today, despite the threat of $11,000 fines - about £5,400 - during the country's coronavirus lockdown.
Sydney's northern beaches were packed with sunworshippers, swimmers and surfers, flouting the social distancing rules aimed at keeping everyone safe from the spread of covid-19.
The city's most famous beach, Bondi, has already been closed after people ignored the guidelines and refused to stay away.
Now the area's northern beaches are being used, as if it is any other day.
In one shocking example, crowds gathered at Fairy Bower pool, after an adolescent Great White Shark was found in Manly.
Pet Care business owner Emma Hicks went to the beach after receiving a text from a friend telling her a shark had been found and rescued and taken to the pool area.
"I arrived to huge crowds surrounding the pool and several staff from the local Sea Life Sanctuary keeping the shark safe and monitoring it.
"It was later released after one or two days in special care and being assessed as OK to go back to the ocean."
In New South Wales leaving your home for anything other than 16 "reasonable excuses" including going to work and picking up food shopping, will see you facing either an £11,000 fine or six months in prison.
Police Commissioner for News South Wales Mick Fuller said people were still struggling to understand what constitutes exercise.
At a press conference on Thursday, he said: "In terms of the new isolation powers, certainly lots of questions about exercise. I don’t get it."
He said the government wanted people to keep fit and exercising.
“But of course if I said that it’s okay to sit on a park bench, then everyone is going to go to the park.
"We’re going to end up where we started.
"On a hot day at Bondi Beach a couple of weekends ago, one person said they were going to go for a swim and we ended up with 10,000 people.”
He added that while strict measures are in place, police would use their discretion when handing out fines.
He said: “Every time a police officer stops someone to ask a question you get this very innate skill of working out whether people are telling you the truth or not.
“If someone says, ‘look I’m going to the chemist’ and if the chemist is over there and visible then that’s fine, we’re not a police state.
"Just to be clear, we’re not.
"But if there’s a group of people in a car, a group of young people and they say they’re going somewhere that doesn’t match up, well then they’ll get a ticket.
"We’ll be reasonable about this, we won’t give everyone a ticket.”
The current lockdown is initially in place for 90 days, but could continue if the virus cannot be contained.
