Time moved slowly inside Suzanne White’s dirty grey Toyota four-wheel drive as she waited in line at a drive-through coronavirus testing site at Manly in Sydney’s north.
White, who lives in Dee Why, showed up at 9am on Friday for a test after a sleepless night spent “stressing” about what a positive result would mean for her family’s Christmas plans.
She had driven past the Manly testing centre before and it always looked empty so she thought she would be “clever” and beat the queues. By 3pm, after six hours in line, she didn’t feel so clever.
“I didn’t think to bring any food but I found an old sesame snack so I rationed that into four pieces and put a half-hour timer on each piece. That was good, that got me through to about midday,” she said.
“Then there was a fly in here for a while that I named Kermit. I’ve been talking to him.”
White thought her dog’s collapsible water bowl looked a bit like the hats that 1980s synth band Devo used to wear, so she took photos of herself wearing it and put those on Facebook.
Her experience wasn’t unique, though, with many people in the area waiting up to six or seven hours at testing sites where lines snaked along the sidewalk.
The slow wait gave White plenty of time to dwell on the significance of a major Covid outbreak just days before Christmas.
Though she lives about 30 minutes south of the heart of the northern beaches outbreak, White had visited Avalon on Wednesday and been to some of the stores connected to the positive cases.
On Thursday afternoon, when news broke that the Avalon cluster had grown to 17 cases, she began to fear what a positive test might mean. Her brother and his family have just relocated to Sydney from Nashville in the US, and they’d spent the day swimming at her house.
“After everything they’ve been through with Covid over there, and then trying to get back to Australia, I just can’t believe it if I have given it to them,” she said.
She also couldn’t help wondering whether complacency had made Sydney particularly vulnerable to this latest outbreak.
“We all just thought that we’d escaped it. That a vaccine was coming and we’ll all skip down the road merrily. But it shows how quickly everything can change,” she said.
“A girlfriend and I were talking the other day about how everyone has been saying ‘2020 was such a shit year bring on 2021’ and we were saying, you know, I hope people realise that New Year’s Eve doesn’t mean Covid has just disappeared. It’s still going to be here.”
As the northern beaches cluster grew to 28 cases on Friday and other states moved to shut their borders, residents across the peninsula were reflecting along much the same lines.
“If you have to lock down the northern beaches to keep people safe, then it is what it is. This is our new normal, we have to live with it,” said Kirsty Kennel Webb, who has been forced to work from home due to the outbreak.
Webb said it was “disappointing” but the local community was taking it seriously.
“People are trying to abide by the rules because Christmas is coming up so quickly. Everyone is just trying to make sure it doesn’t get any more out of control than it already has.”
Webb and her family had plans to visit her brother on the Central Coast, but she is waiting to see how the next couple of days pan out before she makes a decision to cancel.
She laughed off the suggestion anybody would be looking to escape from the region if a localised lockdown was enforced. “I would’ve thought people would like to stay around here,” she said.
Ashley Cardiff, the president of the Avalon Surf Life Saving Club, made the decision to close on Thursday night after learning that one of the two original cases, a man in his 70s, was a member who had visited the club before testing positive.
“He was outside and downstairs so NSW Health told us it was low risk and didn’t put us in one of those higher brackets,” Cardiff said.
Speaking on the way to getting tested, Katie Smallwood said she was a little nervous, but was relieved to see just how many people were getting checked on Friday.
“From what I’ve seen, everyone seems to be doing the right thing, getting tested, and I’m seeing a lot more people in masks,” Smallwood said.
“I have seen some people getting complacent because we haven’t been terribly affected so far, but for the most part everyone seems to be trying to get it sorted before Christmas.”
Asked about Christmas plans, she says she’s had to come up with a contingency if the outbreak results in further restrictions. They had hoped to have family over but accept that now may not be possible.
“We’re taking it day by day, we’re working on a way to still make it exciting and fun for our kids if we do need to all stay home.”
James Sledmere, the owner of Avalon cafe The Sneaky Grind, which was listed as a close contact of the first two cases reported on the peninsula, told the Guardian the timing of the outbreak was bad for local businesses.
“As a business owner, this has been surreal. We’ve had to close because we’re considered close contacts and the timing is very bad.”
He said he and his staff are isolating for 14 days having tested negative – but he understands and accepts the measures being put in place.
“It does make sense, but it is still kind of difficult. It brings to light just how easily the bubble can burst with this virus.”
Smallwood summed up how many in the community are taking a bigger picture view of the current cluster. “If that’s what we need to do so that we can make it to next Christmas, then we’re prepared to do that,” she said.
