How will it feel when the world returns? Like an invasion and a reunion

Localism is a kind of virtue in a village, and this is especially so in resort towns, with their come-and-go inhabitants. In a ranking of how local you are, there are the people who have always lived here, the old folk who have retired here, then the permanent part-timers who own beach houses, and last and least local, the tourists.

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The Chinese disappeared altogether. The town suddenly became as monoethnic as Bellbird. Before COVID the roads were an excitement of befuddled PRC tourists. We exhorted them to keep to the left – but they didn’t like to do it. They would sweep through town stopping to photograph the cockatoos and use the toilets, then on to the apostles and back to Melbourne by sundown. They were aloof, non-participatory, as if visiting a museum. With fresh eyes they stared openly at our strange ways.

We came up with schemes to house them, feed them, massage them, whale-watch them, toll them, and just generally fleece them in any way that was near-enough legal. We aspired to financially eviscerate them like the Italians do us on the Amalfi Coast, but we aren’t as cultured in larceny as those Italians and the Chinese tourists were too smart for us. A councillor told me the average expenditure of a PRC tourist travelling the length of the Surf Coast was 24¢.

The outside world will return to this town some day soon. It’ll feel both invasive and like a reunion. I suppose I’ll still be here contemplating leaving for the big smoke, coming up with reasons not to go; the fantails and gang gangs, the Weed and Feed, the warming sea. As well as the undeniable fact that a place ceases to exist when you’re not there, and thus my going seems a cruel thing to do to the town.