Howdy all. A quick Wednesday afternoon post for you here from Melbourne, Australia. Hope you are all well wherever you might be. Just thought I’d check in with y’all and give a few updates for you!

Firstly, frustratingly, Melbourne has been plunged into Lockdown again. For nearly two weeks now, there was an outbreak which resulted from someone who had quarantined in South Australia, and must have contracted the virus whilst in quarantine. It spread unchecked it seems for a few weeks. There were plenty of tests done but all came back negative, then suddenly we were getting between 5-10 new cases per day and we locked down. The outbreak is currently just under one hundred dating back maybe 3 weeks, It’s actually two outbreaks, but the second appears to have been caught whilst we were in lockdown which may have saved our bacon in some respects.

The lockdown was originally for a week, but it got extended last week for another. Pretty much all cases have been linked and in most cases are close contacts and family members. Anyways, we wait to hear over the next 24 hours whether lockdown will end this Friday as planned, or be extended again. It sounds like it will lift but with restrictions in place.

It’s the fourth lockdown that’s occurred in Melbourne. And we are pretty weary of it. One problem has been the slow rollout of the vaccines. Through a few issues personally (one medical) I am yet to get vaccinated but I should be getting vaccinated, fingers crossed as I’m quite keen, next week.

The positive spin on the lockdown is that it’s seen a huge upsurge in people getting vaccinated. Australia now has over 5 million people with at least one shot, that’s around 20% of the population, and over 2% now fully vaccinated. Worldwide we are almost at 6%, and that doesn’t include figures from China where over 700 million doses have been administered with no data on how many are fully vaccinated.

On a strange positive-ish note, yesterday I was excited to see I had hit 200 subscribers in YouTube. And then a couple of hours later that dipped back to 199 which I have to say was somewhat depressing! I still hope to get to 300 by the end of the year, but it looks like it’s going to be hard. But hey – YOU can help! Head over to my YouTube Channel and SUBSCRIBE NOW!

What else? Well, I had tentative plans for the second half of 2022 in terms of travel and I’ve now come to terms with the fact that it’s going to have to be 2023 at the earliest sadly. The unpredictable nature of everything doesn’t appear like it’s about to end. And the Government here has made it clear they don’t international travel happening again for at least another 12 months. Qantas has been saying that it hopes if enough people are vaccinated by the end of the year maybe it will get moved forward, but the government hasn’t responded. And I think despite this outbreak that once things settle a bit the rush to get vaccinated may die down. Right now though, there are huge queues to get the vaccine and it’s in high demand. Perhaps if the government made a statement about opening up when we hit 70% fully vaccinated or something, that might enthuse some to get the jab.

What else? Well, I’ve located footage from 2015 from Thailand and Myanmar that I never edited, which was exciting because I’ve been trying to work out what I could present in the second half of the year – these should be coming in November to YouTube. I’ve mapped out places I want to visit for ‘Melbourne Revealed’ in October, and hopefully will be able to get down to shooting those in the next couple of months once allowed to, fingers crossed!

The hope is also that I get to travel in October to somewhere domestically. I’m thinking somewhere warm right now as this week winter has hit with a vengeance with wind, rain and cold temperatures aplenty! So I guess being inside when not at work isn’t such a bad thing after all!

How about you? Oh by the way, I do have more Eurovision to share with you over the next couple of weeks, but due to events I have used this slot for an update! Take care and May the Journey Never End!