VIRUS

At first, we could see only positives. Chris would be away for longer than usual and I would finally get to unleash my inner Craft Queen as I attempted to entertain our daughter for four weeks in a half-renovated house. We would get through it and, because Chris was about to work 55 days in a row, we could afford to go to Japan at the end of it.

I did not panic buy toilet paper or tinned food, mainly because I shop monthly like my parents, and I already had a decent supply of both. But a little voice inside me kept saying, ”Grow your own food dickhead.” Obviously a lot of people were hearing this voice because when I went to the local hardware store to buy seedlings I had to get in line. There were limits on what and how much you could buy so about 9 weeks from this ‘essential shopping trip’ we would be eating a lot of sugar loaf cabbage.

“We can make kim chi!!!”

Again, only positives.

I have never actually gardened before. I vaguely remember posing for a photo pretending to shovel fertisliser in 2018, but whenever we attack the white trash paradise that is our yard, I just stand around and look pretty while Chris attacks things with a chainsaw, and I say helpful things like “Is that gold? Because I think people used to mine for gold here.”

I wanted to ask Chris if we still had any of that fertiliser in the shed but the phone lines went down at his mine site at Mount Webber. I assumed because he wasn’t answering his phone he was dead and I waited for Grant, our local policeman to turn up on my doorstep, hat in hand. After three days of planning his funeral, one of the FIFO wives, much scarier than me, spoke to Telstra and the issue was resolved. It was the first time I had considered the distance between us and how crazy it is that he catches three planes to work.

And then there were no planes.

It became obvious that FIFO in and out of Victoria was no longer a thing. Obvious to my husband. I chose to remain in a state of denial for weeks because I had no intention of relocating to Western Australia. But I applied for an exemption to enter the state and secretly hoped we would get knocked back. And when we hadn’t heard anything for almost three weeks I wrote approximately 20 emails begging to be let into the state, just to show Chris I was a team player.

I decided that I would use all this time at home to get out of my cooking rut and collect some new recipes. But people who post recipes on the internet demand that you read their life story and personal relationship to the meal before you can find a list of ingredients so I made toasties for dinner most nights.

We continued to focus on the positives; the catering company that feeds the guys on my husband’s site also has contracts with 5 star resorts. When the resorts closed, some of their chefs ended up in Mount Webber cooking for Rambo, Skiddy, Lumpy and Chops. My husband (Chops) was pretty pumped to be eating pulled pork on house made brioche, even if he did have to eat it from a take away container alone in his donga.

I juggled working from home with a 4 year old and after 7 hours of television and another fucking cheese toastie, I was told, “You’re not doing your best mum.”

And then, as someone who pretends she doesn’t struggle with the odd bout of depression, I got depressed and it took all the energy I had to get out of bed. I refused to speak to my husband because I am a firm believer that if you don’t discuss depression or anxiety it magically disappears. I would either not answer the phone or say hello and tell him I couldn’t speak because I was really busy. Which he saw right through because he’s my husband. I continued to work but I dreaded the meetings on Google Hangouts because I was always on the verge of tears.

I do not like to make adult decisions. I knew that we had to move, because it would be stupid for Chris to give up his job during a pandemic. It was all the other decisions that had to be made that kept me awake at night, even though I knew that Chris would make most of them. There was a small part of me that hoped it would blow over, and if he dared to bring up logitistics, I would start sobbing.

These thoughts on a loop every single night for 8 weeks: Move? Stay? Move? Stay? Live in Perth? Live near Chris’s parents? Live near Chris’s brother? Move to Port Hedland? Long term rental? Air BnB? Fly? Drive? Rent our house? Sell our house? Renovate? Fix the yard? Keep my job? Take all of our belongings? Or some of our belongings? Sell my car? Buy a trailer?

And then I remembered, I’ve seen Frozen 2.

And towards the end of that film when Anna isn’t sure what the fark is going on or what she should do, Mattias,  (her father’s ex guard who got stuck with the Nothuldran when they became trapped n-the forest after Anna’s grandfather -who was the king of Arendelle at the time -tricked them into checking out a dam and slaughtered their leader and left them all for dead), offered Anna some very helpful advice; “ Just when you think you’ve found your way, life will throw you onto a new path. Don’t give up, take it one step at a time and do the Next Right Thing.”

So I did The Next Right Thing. I binge watched Tiger King.

Then I did the next, next right thing which was to make my own sourdough and Instagram the fuck out of it before sharing it with my neighbour.

I packed my shit up and rented the house out and bawled all the way from Newstead to Nhill. I taught my daughter how to pee behind a bush on the Nullabor and I pulled myself together by the time we reached the border, which was still a two day drive away from our destination. I quarantined like a boss (get up, whinge about not being able to leave the house for 8 hours, go to bed) and now I complain if it dips below 20 degrees, which makes me a Western Australian.

…