Australia's Melbourne celebrates end of lockdown as bars, restaurants reopen

The Australian city of Melbourne was celebrating the end of a near four-month lockdown due to COVID-19, with restaurants, bars and retail businesses reopening as the second wave of infections was effectively suppressed.

Release time : 2020-11-02 10:06:02

source : Xinhua

many people were already swarming the same area.

"Instead I invited three friends to come to visit me later in the afternoon. We haven't seen each other for a couple of months. We really need to sit down, have a cup of coffee and a nice talk about how we spent these days," Mike said.

Confident that local contact tracing mechanisms could deal with any virus cases that pop up, Meyn said he thought a return to a full lockdown was unlikely, but understood why capacity limits for venues and other similar restrictions remained in place.

While this means that Melbourne's world-renowned social and arts culture may take even longer to rebuild, Meyn says he expects there will be a golden period of people appreciating with fresh eyes what they have been missing.

"I think the culture will be better than ever because we've realized what Melbourne is like and how much we miss it," he said.

Being an international city, Melbourne also consists of many expats who stayed for the lockdown. Among them is Yiru Wang, a Chinese student at Melbourne's La Trobe University.

Wang remained in Melbourne since the start of the pandemic, though some of her classmates and friends went back to China.

"I don't feel quite different for the reopening because we have spent a long time staying home, during which I practiced Chinese calligraphy, did some research work and a part-time internship. I nearly get used to that kind of life," she said.

She said she will go shopping with some classmates in the upcoming Sunday, take some photos at the Yarra River, and treat themselves with a big meal, especially to have a big cup of bubble milk tea.

"We call it a revenge consumption," she said, "I really miss the bubble milk tea. I haven't had it for months."