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| [Minimum 1.5m or 1 dirt road] |
Social-distance
walking in Binalong recently — lucky to live in such a picturesque area where
it also isn’t hard to avoid people. A combination of country space and everyone
doing their best to keep one another safe.
In the village centre the butcher’s
open as normal and we can still get newspapers and staples from the wee shop but
the Post Office currently closes at 1 pm and the pub is only open (takeaways) lunch time
and tea time. The Old Produce Store in total lockdown has reeled in its gay buntings
and model sheep, while the old General Store, between jobs so to speak, solemnly
awaits a new future. We can still have takeaway food from said Hotel
Binalong Wed-Sat with the new luxury of home delivery Saturday dinner times,
takeaways from Café on Queen on weekends and The Binalong Community Club on Sunday
evenings (also alcohol). The Royal Tara Motel has introduced takeaway Tuesday
Chinese and Tuesday Curries. We are tiny but we are creative. There is the added bonus of saying a socially
distanced hi if you arrive at a similar time to other locals treating
themselves — that’s nearly as exciting as distance waving to one another in the
bigger town supermarket.
Our small village is far from
a bustling metropolis at any time but now it can be coronavirus eerily quiet. Driving
through, say on a mid-week afternoon, reminds me of country towns in rural decline
and how this is what Binalong could look like permanently if it didn’t have its
active community. We worry about businesses (whether shops, farms or
freight) surviving the pandemic, but Binalong will do everything possible to flourish.
In
another life I worked in regional arts development and would hear a lot about rural
town decline. The most common refrain from the communities was: ‘How can we get
our young people to stay?’ Let them go out into the world I say — think about how
to bring them back. In Binalong we have fresh air, clear skies, birds, space, animals, sticks to collect in the paddock, family
fun, community activities, art/artists — lifestyle. Young people are returning to start
their families and we have the delight of that generation plus babies and
toddlers everywhere.
And even the CORVID-19 cloud has a silver lining — it's called Zoom — I have never 'been to' so many poetry events in such a short space of time! Watch for news on a Brush with Poetry thanks to Coordinator Robyn Sykes. Thanks also Robyn for the photo and the walk.
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