A year ago, the epidemic hit home. It was a slow burn. There had been reports from China about this strange new coronavirus.
And then horror stories from Italy of hospitals overwhelmed. Doctors were choosing who to keep alive. Families were kept from dying relatives.
But that was all far away until the week starting on Monday, March 16. On Wednesday, the prime minister announced a ban on big gatherings. On Friday, the Australian border closed - and remains closed to this day.
Everybody has their own memory and their reflection of how it's been.
Mark Gillett's mother-in-law is Chinese and that gave him an insight. She had managed a hospital in China when the SARS epidemic struck.
"She knew all about pandemics," Mr Gillett says. "She was the first one to say, in a very quiet way, 'This will be serious'.
"So I knew immediately that it would not be good."
Mr Gillett owns several businesses, including the Teddybears Childcare Centre in Macarthur. By March 25, there were 26 children in the centre compared with 70 before the epidemic.
His businesses "had an enormous hit" but they have survived: "It cost an enormous amount of money but that happens in life. There are ups and downs."
Many of the 55 workers were from abroad. Some were on work visas which would end if they lost work. In the end, everyone was kept on.
The manager of the childcare centre in Macarthur, Adelia Medina, is an Australian citizen but her parents are still in the Philippines. She frequently talks to them and her siblings in Manila on a Viber video link. "We couldn't celebrate Christmas together. It's like you're having depression and anxiety. When will this stop? We want to be all together on special occasions," she said.
Her colleague Katrina Loja's father used to come over from the Philippines - but not since COVID. "I've lost that family support," she said.
Childcare worker Agustina Fitrawati was in Canberra on a working visa so if she had lost her job her right to stay would have ended. In the end, the visa was converted to a special one to allow her and her family to remain in Canberra through the epidemic.
"It's hard because my husband was working full-time but is now part-time but he hasn't got government support."
He's a courier but the closure of shops meant less to deliver so they have struggled. They are eating into their savings to keep their son in school.
For Phil Thomson, chief executive of the Brumbies, there was no single lightning moment of revelation but there was a day when his world changed.
On the sunny Sunday afternoon of March 15, the Brumbies thrashed the Waratahs 47-14. They seemed unstoppable - until the virus.
And then Super Rugby was cancelled as the lockdown locked in.
"Everyone was in a state of shock. We just weren't sure how long it was going to last," he said. "At the time, it was the unknown, the uncertainty, trying to assess the impact on the staff and the players."
Group training was halted. On that Monday, players came in and took gym equipment home to keep fit as best they could.
On the Thursday, Mr Thomson wrote to supporters: "The reality is the situation we are faced with is changing daily, sometimes hourly."
"We know this virus will continue to change the way we go about our lives in the short term, meaning that when the season resumes our games will be played in front of an empty stadium in the short term and potentially for the remainder of the season.
The short term became a longer term. The Brumbies were back on the field three months later but only in domestic competition and only within the limit of sparse crowds. A trans-Tasman competition is planned for the winter. South Africa has gone from the international competition for the foreseeable future.
But the wariness remains in Mr Thomson's mind.
"Having been through it, we are ready and prepared, and in a better position if something does happen and it escalates."
Clinical psychologist Nicola Palfrey knew COVID wasn't just another passing crisis when she saw the reports from Italy and a GP colleague told her that Australia's health service might be overwhelmed in a similar way.
She thought of her father in Sydney.
"If that comes here," she thought, "he's going to die. That's something you would never think could happen in Australia. You would always think that your family would get the healthcare it needed."
It didn't happen because Australia dealt with the looming danger but for the first time, the possibility was there in the daughter's mind.
On July 9, she was prevented from attending his 84th birthday.
Dr Palfrey is the Director of the Australian Child and Adolescent Trauma, Loss and Grief Network at the Australian National University so she's been studying the psychological effects for the past year.
She cites her father who remembers the war and its "prolonged uncertainty". The epidemic resonates with him in a similar way, Dr Palfrey said.
"Living with uncertainty is really getting to people. People are running out of adrenaline and out of patience."
But, her big realisation from the past year is that love and "connection" matters more than ever. She feels that losing the freedom to visit family makes us appreciate those we love even more.
The author of this piece, Steve Evans, had his own unique experience due to COVID-19: "I booked the flight from London to Canberra on March 12. The receipt doesn't give a time but it must have been at around three o'clock in the morning. I had gotten up in the middle of night and done all my usual insomniac web-surfing. I suddenly saw that Australia was about to bring down the barriers.
"Since Australia is home, I knew there was a problem so I went straight online and booked a flight for the next day, March 13.
"It was at that moment of booking that I realised that the virus was real.
"There had been headlines about this strange plague going around in Wuhan in China and then horror stories from Italy were appearing on the news - but I didn't worry too much because London was packed with Italians, and they didn't seem worried as they enjoyed the spring sunshine. I remember being near Shakespeare's theatre, the Globe, on the Thames and hearing all these Italian accents and thinking: 'So, what's the problem? The Italians don't seem too flustered'.
"When I got back to Canberra, I knew I would have to go into quarantine but the taxis to home in Queanbeyan were still running so there was still no real sense of crisis. Quarantine at home seemed novel and, yes, fun.
"And then a friend emailed to say that he had spent four days in hospital with COVID-19, being absolutely certain he was about to die. Then I knew that the Thing was real and here to stay. That feeling hasn't gone even as the vaccine does its work.
"By the way, my last words to my partner in London were: 'See you in June.' Last year."
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