My jaw has been clamped shut like a rabbit trap from stress for about 10 days now there would be no point prying it open as, again today, another person stopped me on the street, to implore my help in voicing their story.
I hugged her as the tears rolled.
Weirdly I wasn't arrested for seeing the desperate need for human contact in a friend who was suffering and offering it; even though she comes from NSW. Though I'm half expecting to have police on my door after writing this.
In recent days I've seen more crappy posts on the internet than you can poke a stick at. Mostly from the unscathed. People who have done the bare minimum of the heavy lifting in the last 18 months to keep up the illusion that we can hold water in a sieve.
I think the worst part of the side-choosing colloquialism for me has become 'the un-scathed versus the suffering'. The utter self-righteousness of those who choose to disregard the desperation of others, people who surpassed their breaking point months ago, in order to tout the idea of 'safety' has left me exasperated.
Here on the border we have been told that the children of our essential workers can go to school, yet the very teachers charged with the care and education of those children are no longer essential and are no longer able to cross the border to teach them.
Even as I write it again, I still can't fathom the ludicrousness of it.
We have year 12 teachers and students - days away from ATAR who can't go to school. We have 100 per cent indigenous schools, in remote communities, whose teachers can no longer go to them. We have remote and isolated children from farms 30kms from the nearest neighbour being told that they are a danger to the sanctity of Queenslanders.
It beggars rational belief that we could still be going around on this carousel of 'open, shut them, open, shut them, give a little clap!', yet here we are.
We have a town split in two, where on one side we are blissful in our 'no restrictions' bubble, and on the other; families are now split in two. Those who remained on the other side are forced further into NSW.
Making it more likely that we will see an outbreak on the cusp of the border. Merely two weeks ago they were abiding by the request to stay as close to our community and as far from others as possible. Now they are without options.
Those who can cross must show a dozen papers at the checkpoint. We must be vaccinated and have had a test every seven days.
We ready our stories and practise them so we don't crumble when interrogated. "Papers please, what's your reason for entering Queensland?" As we simply go from one side of a river to the other in the same country. Dystopian is an understatement yet people who aren't living it scoff that we are 'exaggerating' the situation.
We could have implemented a traffic light system of standard border rules throughout the entire country so our communities could at least have some certainty, but each time it's a brand-new set of directives, followed by weeks of negotiations when it becomes apparent that no one thought them through.
We could have offered support for teachers and students to relocate temporarily.
We could have offered testing and exemptions for health and compassionate grounds, but instead we see our loved ones being treated like second class citizens while the peanut gallery cheers it on.
Over my years as a rural Australian, I have learnt that politics is 80 per cent marketing and 20 per cent trying-to-make-it-look-like-it's-not-marketing.
This is blaringly obvious in this new Queensland where announcements are made before directives are even written. And for us here on the border the real despair comes in the realisation that this may never end.
For as long as the political approach is to put an iron bar through our communities to give the illusion of safety to the rest of the state, there is no imperative for Queenslanders to mobilise, exert themselves, vaccinate and ready for the incremental release of the hand brake.
We will not see an end to this for as long as the Premier's approach is to lock us away, to hell with the consequences, allowing Queenslanders to skate by without the 'impending doom' needed to motivate them into readying, physically and mentally.
How long can we let people believe 'zero-covid' is sustainable? How long can we ignore all the other consequences being inflicted to attain it?
How long can you lock children out of their schools? How long will we turn people away from their closest available medical specialists? How long can you keep people from their own businesses? How long will we tolerate not being able to see our family interstate let alone overseas?
But continuation of all of this is the reality we are lining up for if we don't really start voicing our concern about border policies that continue to feed the unattainable Zero-Covid ambitions of the unscathed decision makers.
- Bess O'Connor is a contributor for the View from the Paddock column.
