LIKE many Australian coastal towns and regions, the Port Stephens and Tea Gardens/Hawks Nest areas are heavily dependent on holiday seasons when it comes to their businesses surviving the traditional off-season winter lulls.
Additionally, this area of coast is home to some of the highest concentrations of retired and elderly people anywhere in Australia.
Indeed, the latest, December 2019, Australian Bureau of Statistics report on the make-up of the Australian population has Tea Gardens/Hawks Nest as the oldest town in the nation, with a median age of 62.7 years.
Tuncurry, 100 kilometres north, was second-oldest in the national tally with a median age of 61.1 years.
This combination of a tourist-based economy and an ageing permanent population shapes as a double threat for residents of these otherwise sanguine places: as it does for those whose positions of authority mean they are charged with managing the situation as best they can.
Encouraging people to proceed with their holiday plans might help our holiday towns economically, in the short term, but it also runs the risk of introducing the coronavirus into areas it might not otherwise go, and with greater damage than might otherwise be the case because of the aged population.
The sad but unavoidable reality is that if Australia is serious about trying to slow, manage, and eventually control the spread of COVID-19, then the various measures already announced - the cancellation of mass gathering events, travel restrictions and a shift to working from home where possible - will have less than their full effect if people simply swap their day at the footy or trip to Bali with a last-minute decision to head somewhere closer for Easter.
At the same time, however, as our authorities are warning of the deadly nature of coronavirus for the ageing and the unwell, there's an understandable desire to proclaim "business as usual" wherever possible.
It might already be a cliche, but none of us have been here before.
Unless the Australian government orders an Italian or Chinese style lock-down, we will all make our decisions as best we can.
The empty restaurants and cancelled bookings indicate that most of us have already decided that "self isolation" and "social distancing" are the best first steps to riding out the threat with the least possible risk.
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