25 June – 5 July 2020

CS Lewis described it as the Wood between the Worlds. That place in between, that is neither here nor there, that is a cross road from what was to what will be. Where time means nothing and an hour is a year but a week is a second. 

We are in the ‘in between’, in a dreamlike existence where time, days, temperature and seasons have no real meaning. You could grow old here and not realise it. Time flies by in a whirr of nothingness.

Our world has become our two rooms. The windows are like TV screens that project ‘the outside world’ for us to gaze upon but not touch. Apparently the mild Australian winter has chased away the provençale summer out there. In here, it is always 21 degrees. The only meteorological variation is the smell of the girl’s intestines dealing with Gary the chef’s cooking (and his preference for tasty curries). 

In the Wood there is no direct contact with real people. Three times a day there is a knock on the door and we are presented with identical food boxes. Sometimes we call ahead and a bottle of wine magically appears. We wave at the security guard at the end of the hall. He waves back. He may just be a figment of our imagination. 

The phone rings daily and a distant voice asks us if we have covid symptoms yet and whether we are having a nervous breakdown or not. We dutifully answer no to both. We are rightfully still treated as risky, and wait patiently for our day 11 test which will, hopefully, indicate that we are in the clear and give us our ‘green ring’ (or in our case our covid negative certificate) that will pull us back into the real world.

The internet, like the ponds in Wood, is our only connection to where we’ve been and where we’re going. We run Zoom calls to school, Teams and Chat calls to work and WhatsApps to friends and family. There have been a number of occasions when we are running 5 calls at a time. Our devices are fatigued but we are grateful for the distraction. And the debate rages – what is required for a video call? A shower? Brushed hair? Clean teeth? Pyjamas on the top? Pyjamas on the bottom? What is the difference between pyjamas and day wear when there is no outside world anyway? Pants? (mainly a challenge for Sena). 

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We draw on our experience of 11 weeks in confinement in France to keep the girls sane, busy and somewhat fulfilled. The fact that we are both back at work makes this harder and ensures that we now have a first hand appreciation of how challenging the lockdown was for working parents. 

We set schedules with the kids each day. No longer insisting on school uniforms, we do insist that pyjamas come off and, critically, pants go on). We juggle diaries to set and oversee homework (the French school year has drawn to a close this week), craft projects, board games, make-your-own movie projects and anything else to delay the inevitable slide into ‘OK you can just watch Netflix now’ (but the first 30 mins has to be in French!). This has included birthing ‘Marriott Gary Lonsdale’, a cardboard robot who is bigger than they are. 

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The girls have had their final Zoom classes with their classes in France, saying goodbye to their teachers and friends as they head off for 2 months of European summer vacation.

With our departure from France and the end of the French school year, we are desperately trying to maintain the kids’ connection to French. French lessons with Nathalie continue unchanged by Skype, TV continues to be at least somewhat in French and we are trying to promote reading French books. We have recorded the girls describing their feelings after the year in French and were again floored by the progress that occurred even in the last month or so. Whilst covid disrupted our plans to get to China on the way home, staying in France for that extra 6 weeks really did have its advantages. 

We run exercise classes – from dance classes, to HiiT classes to yoga. Anthony’s bike trainer has been dusted off now and the provençale countryside has been swapped out for images of Italian and Belgian countryside projected from the ipad. 

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A lifetime ago, during our first three days, we were even allowed outside for 15 minutes each day to play on a terrace. Doesn’t sound that exciting, does it? But it really was. Never underestimate the pleasure of deeply breathing in the pristine air of the Melbourne CBD.

Liz’s tireless efforts to animate and entertain have been duly noticed, with even Jessie commenting that she has been doing a wonderful job.  

But despite our best efforts, cracks are beginning to show. It is hard to maintain the rage. Kids are not meant to be locked up without access to fresh air, daylight and social connection and they are starting to struggle. They miss their friends and their life in France. They miss social connections with someone, anyone, to whom they are not directly related. They miss Bonnie (we’re not convinced it’s reciprocal). They are both excited and no doubt a little nervous about going home but are itching to get on with it. The nurses have done an amazing job to support them with phone chats and send up games and activities to keep them busy.

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The hotel, and particularly the staff, have been wonderful. Compared to others we have seen we are incredibly fortunate.  The Marriott took one look at our number of bags and children and gave us an interconnecting suite plus double room for the girls. We have 2 bedrooms, a lounge room and two bathrooms. We have space for all our stuff and are not falling over each other too much. 

It must be an interesting decision for hotels to decide to take part in the quarantine program or not. It is a choice between being effectively empty for 3-6 months or having your 4-5 star rooms destroyed by at best well meaning, at worst angry quarantine’ees. These rooms were not really set up for 2 weeks of solid, 3 meals a day, family habitation. Even in our ‘suite’ there are no tables to eat off, no cooking facilities (they took pity on us and gave us a microwave and a kettle) a handful of coffee cups and exactly 5 knives, forks and spoons. Despite our best efforts not to trash the place, we have children eating off towels in the lounge room and washing up in the bathroom sinks (one has been blocked beyond repair since a child-induced udon incident on day 2, and the hotel is unable to send someone in or give us the equipment to fix it ourselves). Videos of quarantine-ees ironing bacon between sheets of foil and sous-vide-ing scrambled eggs in kettles are all over the internet. These rooms will simply never be the same again. 

Our food has been pretty good, far from some of the horror stories that have been shared in various social media forums in other locations. This has meant that we have been able to limit our ‘home cooking’ adventures to various forms of noodles and some microwaved veges, and reserved UberEats orders to special Saturday night treats. Whilst it is not up to the standards that we enjoyed during our last period of confinement, it is pretty impressive considering every meal comes out at the same time across the fully occupied hotel. And there is significantly less washing up.  

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Upon a particularly successful meal of fish and chips, the girls decided to write a thank you card to Gary, the head chef (can anyone say ‘2 hour craft project?). The following day we received a card in return along with 3 days supply of little cakes. These guys are really making an effort. 

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The hotel has also given us board games, toys, craft supplies, melatonin for jetlag and a steady supply of wine (extra fees apply – but in quarantine, as in confinement, there is no judgement). They even facilitated the arrival of the tooth fairy when Jessie lost a tooth on our first night.

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This is on top of the mountains of school work, books, lego, games, a PS4, board games (thanks Ash!) and exercise gear we packed with us. And we have sourced top up snackies from the local supermarket and a Nespresso machine. So we are stocked for food, games, activities and caffeine and have plenty of things to entertain ourselves between door knocks and food deliveries each day. 

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Despite the obvious challenges, there has been more than one occasion where we have considered faking symptoms and test results to earn ourselves a longer stay. 

Meanwhile, across town, Bonnie is also in quarantine – albeit 10 days as compared to our 14. From the reports we’ve been getting from Jetpets, he is holding up well after his long journey from France. We can’t wait to see him again and take him home. We think he’s probably enjoying the break from being touched constantly by 3 small children. 

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In the outside world, covid is on the charge in Melbourne. Since our arrival, there have been up to 100 new cases a day across the city – most originating from failures in protocols in certain quarantine hotels. 

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As a result of these failures, the quarantine program in Melbourne has been put on hold and all international flights routed elsewhere. Pets, who were in transit towards Melbourne (the only port they can arrive at in Australia) have been stuck in Doha or Dubai. Sydney, unable to deal with the additional influx of demand on its quarantine hotels, has had to put limits on new arrivals of 450 people per day (max 50 per flight). Families heading towards fee-free quarantine in Sydney or Melbourne, have been re-routed to Queensland or WA where they are invited to spend up to $5,000 per family for the privilege (or are just told that they are can’t get in for now). We are so fortunate that we got in when we did. Even if it means no more fresh air breaks for us.

(Side note: Security guards have been posted at all quarantine hotels across the country  to ensure we don’t wander off without incurring a $20,000 fine. In much of the country, these are either army or police. In Victoria, they are private security contractors who have been onboarded in a rush. These guards in quarantine hotels have come under a lot of scrutiny this week in Melbourne as they have been identified as the source of the recent covid outbreak across the city. Reported behaviour has included poor hygiene practices, lack of social distancing and even sleeping with some quarantine’ees, which apparently is against the rules). Hence the suspension of the system for now. 

As a result of the surge in new cases, certain postcodes across Melbourne have been locked down and border restrictions between states have been imposed. Those spending time in these postcodes have been requested to not cross the border to NSW, or at least self isolate once there. At this stage, neither we, nor Bonnie, are in a hotspot, although Bonnie is just next door. So we are crossing fingers that the outbreak does not get worse in the next few days and further disrupt our travel plans back to Sydney. 

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Somewhat unbelievably we are now at day 12 of our 14 day stay. It feels strange that our time here is coming to a close as we only arrived here yesterday but we’ve been here for years. It’s weird that we are going to be allowed out into the outside world again – a bit like when we took Ellie home for the first time after 5 days in hospital whilst she taught us how to parent. 

We have had our covid test and are waiting for our results. It would be unusual if we had it and were all asymptomatic, but you never know. We should get out results tomorrow, along with our ‘ticket to leave’ for Tuesday morning. 

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Considering the current covid situation in Melbourne, the minute we get our green ring/covid negative test, we will jump in our van, pick up Bonnie and drive north with all the windows shut until we hit the border. 

Depending on the rules, we are hoping to able to drop into Goulburn to see Grandpa on the way through, and hoping that we don’t have to re-isolate again when we finally do get home. 

But either way, we’ll be out of the Woods and back into the real world. We will have access to a garden, a dog and fresh air. Whilst we would love to see our friends and family as soon as possible, we will be patient and safe and endeavour to arrive north of the border with nothing more than our 200kgs of luggage. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

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So, as we start to pack our bags and plan our departure out of here, we have a couple of tips and tricks for those embarking on their journey into the woods: 

• Don’t be subtle about asking on the way in – we asked for space for our stuff, a microwave and access to outdoors… and the staff have been amazing at helping us out. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. 
• Pack stuff for kids to keep them off screens for as long as possible (ours go crazy if left on for too long) – craft, painting, schoolwork, sudoku, lego, gravitrax, puzzles etc are all great and means you can mix things up in fairly quick succession to maintain sanity for as long as possible (NB: the Marriott has also kindly supplied us with a bunch of stuff here too)
• Make sure everything’s properly rinsed before washing up in the sink… hotel sinks don’t like noodles or cereal! 
• Get the kids to do a daily schedule including school work, craft, exercise and free time – make them do it and make them stick to it – even if they want to be catatonic on the couch
• Stock up on snacks from a supermarket delivery – we have gone through mountains of cereal (breakfast can be a bit hit and miss) carrots, capsicum, fruit, biscuits etc – which allow everyone to top up between the 3 meals a day 
• If you like your coffee, buy a cheap Nespresso machine and get it delivered to the hotel (we lasted less than 24 hours with hotel instant coffee)
• Wine at the Marriott has actually been relatively reasonable ($25 for a drinkable bottle) – so stock up on other essentials rather than loading up on alcohol when coming in 
• Bring an HDMI cable (assuming your computer has a socket for it) and bluetooth speaker to allow you to connect Netflix or Disney to the hotel TVs for movie nights (and avoid Australian commercial TV) 
• If you are planning to bring Google Chrome or PS4 etc – anything like that that requires connection to a wifi network – we needed a separate 4G wireless router to provide a network outside the hotel network to get it to work (maybe our lack of tech savvy but we couldn’t hotspot this) 
• Bring enough stuff for exercise if that’s a thing for you… HiiT classes, yoga etc are great, but there’s only so many you can do. Bringing a bike and a trainer into quarantine has not been as stupid as it sounded. 
• Whatever your thoughts on devices, bring enough for everyone. And headphones. There’s nothing worse than watching Independence Day (it was the 4 July afterall) and having Peppa Pig running in the background!
• Remember to be nice to each other. This is a pretty unique circumstance and, at times, it is not easy on anyone. Whilst we won’t look back on this time as fondly as we do our confinement in France, it certainly hasn’t been all bad, and I daresay we will miss some of the sheer simplicity of it when we get back to the hussle of the ‘real world’ next week.