The words were said with the innocence only a child can muster.
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"Daddy, I hope this goes on forever," she said.
This was our nine-year-old during the week in reference to the coronavirus and our life in lockdown.
The statement was definitely not a reflection of the seriousness of the pandemic and the ensuing economic crisis the world is enduring. No, it was more her honest assessment of her own life.
She has her mother and father invested totally in her everyday life. There is the daily family walks, the board games and dad has been on leave so he's had plenty of time for backyard basketball.
Perhaps also truthfully, there has been more screen time than usual.
Most nights are spent on the couch cuddled up in her sister's arms watching a steady diet of Celebrity Name Game, Bondi Rescue reruns and of course Masterchef. Not a bad life for a nine-year-old.
Yet this week, the part of this nation where she was born and spent the first four years of her life growing up was thrust into the national spotlight as the epicentre of a major coronavirus outbreak.
Our many family and friends still on the North-West Coast of Tasmania found themselves in a dire predicament. You get a strong sense of their worry and concern for what their little patch of paradise is going through.
A large portion of their community forced into quarantine and many of those the health workers that keep their region healthy and alive.
The region's two major hospitals, a public and a private one, which sit side-by-side and share many services were forced to shut.
The only hospital now servicing the region is one kept alive only through the political will of John Howard and Tony Abbott many years before. One of the benefits of the federal seat of Braddon being one of the most marginal in the country for some time.
It's hard to communicate the gravity of that situation to a nine-year-old and frankly I'm not sure why you'd want to. Her world, for now at least, is the small family she has around her and she's perfectly happy with that. And in that sense, her view of the world is totally understandable.
Julian O'Brien is the editor of the Illawarra Mercury.
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