The golf course is closed. The entrance is ineffectively barred with hazard tape, like some forgotten crime scene barrier, but there’s nothing to say it’s a crime to enter.
There are no flagsticks. The holes have been plugged, filled with sod and seeded so they’re all but indistinguishable from the rest of the green.
I sit at the 5th, its perfectly manicured carpet an ideal reading slouch or spot for a utopian picnic.
It is a beautifully temperate Tasmanian autumn day. The grass is cool and slightly damp with the aroma of fecundity, but the sun is strong. The sky is blue for now, but grey-bellied clouds lurk with unknown intentions.
Eucalypts and brightly moulting deciduous hem the fairway, and kunanyi peeks between them, her teal face clear of snow. Dusky lorikeets flitter between the trees, excitedly twittering, as a black currawong curses its complaints from the pallid branch of a ghost gum.
Emboldened turbo-chooks peck the rough, as the skeletal rustle of autumn leaves is noticeable in the quiet morning. The world seems slower, more introspective.
Across the fairway, a waddling septuagenarian walks a terrier, but elsewise the course – which is essentially now an expansive park – is devoid of people. Likewise, the council and government offices at the edge of the park are empty, the cars that usually crowd around them are elsewhere.
In this altered Coronaworld, we have been given time to slow down, reflect.
What the coming winter holds in store, you the reader will have a clearer idea of on your side of the page. With Australia’s comparatively promising response, we may fewer restrictions by the time you read this. At the time of writing, however, we are in deep lockdown, allowed out only for exercise, sustenance and emergencies. All scenarios are still possible.
Will it be a throwback to the Tasmanian winters of decades ago, when cafes served Nescafe 42 beans, and socialising consisted of a cosy winter-cling, or watching the footy with mates on the box?
The winter hibernation is well-known to Tasmanians of certain generations – the sociopause, the dark doss, the annual slendricking, the mass modhuri – but this time with no chance of a wintervention escape to sunny climes.
Of course, we’ve moved on – this would be a cybernation – but amidst the Netflix binging and Stan sessions there may be a chance of self-reflection and re-examination of priorities and, like those winters of old, an exuberance for celebration when the clouds lift.
There are silver linings to Coronaworld. Indeed, on closer examination the brightness is not just at the edge of the cloud. There are blue skies over New Delhi and Los Angeles. There are dolphins in the canals of Venice. And here, at the edge of the park, the rivulet, usually choked by plastics of every colour, runs freer and somehow prouder.
With the partial isolation of much of humanity, the planet breathes easier. Of course, the lorikeets and native hens carry on status quo, obliviously proclaiming how unnecessary humans are to the party.
And what of the burden of people, the social isolation, the financial pressure, the monotony?
I think of the duty thrust upon previous generations, called to duty in arenas of death, gore, and primary terror. My great grandfather was awarded the Military Medal for pushing forward while mortar shells obliterated his mates beside him. Next to that, our current predicament is a walk in the park – to stay in the comfort of our warm homes, reading, Zooming, watching Tiger King, or occasionally venturing out to share your thoughts with a deserted golf course.
