Lockdown - Paperback

by Chip Le Grand (Author)

How does a city go from being the world's most liveable to its most locked down? For 262 days, Melbourne was cocooned by stay-at-home orders. Businesses were forcibly closed, classrooms shuttered, and community and social life relegated to an impersonal online world. To stop the spread of a virus, people were prevented from saying goodbye to dying loved ones, children were separated from their parents, and playground equipment was taped off like a crime scene. Through successive COVID winters, the state of Victoria was isolated from the rest of the federation and Melbourne from the rest of the state. Our remarkable success was to eliminate the virus--at least for a time--achieving something no other city had. But this came at a severe cost, one unlikely to be fully understood for years to come. Lockdown is the story of Melbourne's singular pandemic experience, an examination of the decisions taken in pursuit of COVID-zero, and the consequences of those decisions.

Author Biography

Chip Le Grand is the chief reporter for The Age. He has worked as a journalist with The Australian and The Age newspapers for thirty years, and has spent most of that time writing about the people and politics of Melbourne. His previous book, The Straight Dope, an investigation into the Essendon and Cronulla doping scandals, won the Walkley Book Prize and William Hill Australian Sports Book of the Year.