In our Missing Voices series, Crikey asks our older readers to share their first-hand experiences of the pandemic.
Jon Laing writes: I am a 79-year-old female. I was a very fit young person who grew up in the bush. I rode horses all day, mustered sheep and generally helped on the property.
At age 12 I was sent to boarding school in Sydney — this proved to be a huge shock to a young girl used to so much freedom! It was a Catholic girls’ school of the 1950s, with all the attendant discipline that implies. I was sporty and excelled at tennis, basketball and cricket. I also loved literature.
Moving on from there I trained as a registered nurse, travelled overseas for four years and lived a full life.
The past eight months of my life have been a huge challenge. I was exercising regularly, going to a chiropractor and eating well. I became a little breathless and visited my doctor, which led to major surgery in Sydney.
I was so lucky to have all this happen just before the virus struck. I was able to fly to Sydney, have the surgery and come back to Melbourne for recovery.
Lockdown has been a period of recovery for me. I am still working and my work has been very much held up and challenged.
I am in the fashion industry and sell some of the best Australian designer collections on a seasonal basis to boutique outlets around Australia. A new way of working has been discovered in my industry — the power of the visual image — and the power of personal relationships has come to the fore.
We are all learning that trust and goodwill and an understanding of the situation of each other is a valuable and rewarding experience. This is a period of frustration, but it is also a period of development and a wonderful opportunity for workers and government to make profound change, where change is indicated, and there are many indications that change is necessary in so many areas of our lives.
Valerie Levy writes: I am 81 and American by birth. I have lived in Australia for almost 50 years.
I want to live long enough to see the end of Trump and, as a dual citizen, I vote.
I am obeying the rules and admire Dan Andrews, and resent the people crowding the pubs: shut them down!
Robyn Jewell writes: I’m a week short of 75 and, for the average punter, in reasonably good health. Having been born two days before the end of the war in the Pacific and hence the complete end of World War II, I’ve always considered myself to be a bit ahead of the baby boomer generation.
My sole source of income is the aged pension and I am fortunate to live in an independent living village where my rent is such that I can afford to fund all of my needs and most of my wants.
It strikes me that for most people younger than I, the pandemic is the first universal major challenge they have faced. This isn’t to say that many individuals haven’t had tough, sometimes dreadfully tough, times in their lives, but for us all as a population, this is the first really big challenge.
So it’s not surprising that some people are having difficulty putting the greater good ahead of their own individual wants. It’s disappointing, and I get very angry, in fact, when I see and read about those whose selfish behaviour puts us all at risk.
The situation in aged care has exposed a number of unedifying aspects of our society: the failings of the neoliberal ethos, particularly when the product is the delivery of services and care to fellow human beings; the total devaluing, from the highest level of government down, of those of us who are aged and no longer beautiful in the classical sense; the failure to legislate for adequate financial remuneration for professional carers, so they don’t need to work across multiple sites to survive.
It’s hard not to draw the conclusion that in the view of some sections of the community we, as senior citizens, are generally regarded as “past it” and pretty useless, certainly not worth spending lots of money on. As more than one commentator has said — if these individuals were children (I would add, white children) this wouldn’t be happening.
When I put that together with the treatment of “others” — our Indigenous brothers and sisters, refugees and people seeking asylum, those with mental health and substance abuse issues — I have a pretty bleak view of modern Australia, although it is tempered at times by hearing about, seeing and experiencing numerous acts of individual love and kindness.
Climate change and loss of species is another issue, although they are undoubtedly linked and part of the bigger picture. My aim is to live at least another 20 years to see how it all ends, to see whether this time of hardship and pain results in any substantial change in values for the population of this, the lucky country.
Crikey is calling for readers in their 70s and beyond to share their first-hand experiences of the pandemic. To contribute, write to us at boss@crikey.com.au with “Missing Voices” in the subject line.
I completely agree with Robyn Jewell’s comment “It strikes me that for most people younger than I, the pandemic is the first universal major challenge they have faced.”
I’m old enough to remember the cold war, Yom Kippur war, 9/11, gulf war I and II, etc., but I do believe that the entire world hasn’t dealt with such a widespread crisis since WWII. That is indeed why many young people are struggling to cope with the Covid-19 situation.
What ‘major universal crisis’ has a 70 something faced then, by that criteria?
Not sure if anybody else noticed or not but some of the “older readers” comments bare a remarkable similarity to the comments of the commentators here on Cky….surely not.
I’m 67 and just missed conscription thanks to Gough in 1972. I got my dose of bad luck in life at age 5 when my father died of war causes. But I was lucky with my choice of mother, who worked hard to rear three children (I was the eldest) as a single woman. The Repatriation Dept (now Vets Affairs) covered uni fees and provided an allowance of $27 a week. I also worked 25 hours a week as a kitchen hand at uni. At age 25, I took off backpacking and got a job as a tour guide doing European tours in summer and the overland to Kathmandu and back to London in winter. I was able to travel through Syria, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal without fear of kidnapping or being a hostage, able to move freely and with neither fear nor restriction. Back in Australia I married, got a job, built a house, transferred to Canberra, worked overseas on a couple of contracts and now have a govt pension.
We former tour guides from the 70s and 80s have Facebook pages for reunions, keeping in touch etc and we all marvel at the immense good luck that has blessed us as Baby Boomers. Watching my three adult children paying HECS debts, and high (as a percentage of salary) mortgages for small apartments, not to mention the existential threats of global warming and over-population, I realise again and again that I may be a member of the luckiest generation. So do my peers on that Facebook page.
My mother (born 1920) used to speak of the Depression (during which time her farmer father shot himself) and my father-in-law (born 1919, still alive and compus mentis) can still tell stories of the privations of Depression life in rural Tasmania and his four years serving overseas in WW2.
When I was young, it was just old people talk. But over the years I have come to appreciate my immense personal good fortune in never having had to face an overarching global and life-changing emergency or crisis.
The fact of my birth is down to all my ancestors having survived long enough to procreate – during plagues, wars, fires, famines and all the rest. My luck was in its timing. Had I been unlucky enough to have been born in 1890, I may well have been killed on the Somme or by the Spanish flu, or suffered during the Depression. I was lucky enough to have been born in 1953 and have lived through the most peaceful, healthiest and most prosperous period in world history.
Reading “Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari has only served to confirm this. There never were and never will be any guarantees about human existence.
Great piece of writing, DF.
The aged care sector is just another example of where Morison aka ‘the fool in the baseball cap’ and ‘daggy dad’ is all talk and little if any action. Morrison is very quick to jump in front of the TV cameras and tell all who will listen how much he has the welfare of our most vulnerable (the aged) at heart and yet there is increasing evidence that this is the very group of people who have been neglected and a low priority assigned to their well-being. As a result this group is now paying a high price at the hands of COVID19. But then given Morrison’s perverted interpretation of fairness should anyone be surprised by this?
‘There is a fair go for those who have a go. That’s what fairness in Australia means’. So stated Scott Morrison in his first press conference after he had slimed his way to the leadership of the Liberal Party. He was later to expand on his concept of fair go: ‘ … that involves an obligation on all of us to be able to bring what we have to the table’ Indeed this is Morrison’s central theme in his version of fairness that is, one’s deserts/treatment depend on what one “brings” to the table’. And what is ‘the table’? In the neo-liberal view the market is omnipresent and under neoliberalism an individuals’ worth is determined by their economic value and what one can contribute to economic growth that is table.
This sets up a dichotomy and neatly divides society into groups, what – in the past have been termed ‘lifters’ and ‘leaners’. The ‘lifters’ are those who use their talent, initiative and propensity to work hard to grow the economy and thus deserve their high income, wealth, status and power and of course special government treatment in terms of lower tax, less regulation, and neutered workforce. And the ‘leaners are those who make no meaningful contribution to economic growth but rather make demands on the economy and drawn it down. This has given rise to a new negative for a whole group of persons – ‘loser’. To be a ‘loser’ now implies some basic defect one has that prevents one from achieving their goals. In this regard the unemployed and others on welfare may be termed as leaners/losers.
The aged fit somewhere in between yet because they bring little to the table they are downgraded in terms of the quality of care and concern for their well being by Morrison and his neo-liberal goons. Note Morrison’s disdain and lack of concern for the unemployed and others was shown when the Robo debt fiasco was uncovered. Morrison had to be dragged kicking and screaming to get an apology out of him for all the stress this episode caused welfare recipients.
This is another reason Morrison has little desire to see the recall of parliament for any Opposition Party worth anything would bring out into the open the neglect that the aged care sector has been subjected to and show Morrison in the light his deserves to be shown in not his manufactured media self-promotion adverts.
In a nation such as Australia any notion of fairness must include the following: Australians work if we can, pay taxes … if we fall on hard times we look to government to support us without any negative connotations attached. This then establishes a social contract between citizens and government more attuned to a humane interpretation of fairness.
Excellent points, Lionheart.
Thank you Gerry. Sorry for some of the errors I missed in the writing. Must brush up on my editing skills.
I strongly support your comment regarding DF. As a fellow baby boomer I can totally understand where DF is coming from.
All the best to both of you.
As a 70 year old I have been following the Aged Care issues quite closely. Further research revealed that the former Health Minister, Nicola Roxon now works for BUPA. I was shocked, but not surprised. Appalled at the way Government ministers can cash in on experience in government to make a financial killing when retired and collecting government super. Disgusted that Labor can sprout about anything to do with aged care when one of their own is on the payroll of one of the most dishonest, cruel and greediest so called ‘providers’, that also took huge amounts of Commonwealth money and sent it back to BUPA in the UK, and left elderly Australians neglected, financially ripped off and lying in faeces. My follow up question is whether or not BUPA was approved to enter the Australian health care market when Roxon was Health MInister? Was there any obvious conflict of interest?