By Mikayla van Loon
For 262 days, metropolitan Melbourne faced the toughest and longest lockdown in the world, making the taste of freedom sweeter than ever.
Cafes, restaurants and bars, as well as hairdressers, were the first to emerge from the stay-at-home orders, as the restrictions placed on people lifted on Friday 22 October.
Hills residents didn’t waste any time getting back to normality, making bookings for breakfast, lunch and dinner wherever they could get in.
But while the excitement for patrons was obvious, restaurant owners and cafe managers said the stress of density limits, policing vaccinations and staffing, had made the return to dining-in quite stressful.
Andrew from The Belgrave Hotel said his bookings for the first weekend out of lockdown were full but he was limited by the density restraints.
“I think people are still a little bit scared to get out but we’ve got some good bookings for tonight (22 October) and tomorrow night because we can basically only have 20 inside and it’s very important for us to stick to these rules,” he said.
Alan from Ranges at Olinda said aside from checking whether every customer has had a double dose of the vaccine, he doesn’t have enough staff who have been fully vaccinated to operate completely.
“Our difficulty is that some of our crew have only had the one vaccination and are waiting for the second one to come on board and we can’t open as such for seated people unless all of the staff are fully vaccinated,” he said.
“Originally they said to us that as long as they are vaccinated by a particular date in November, that would be okay but they’ve changed that now.
“It’s put us in a situation where we’re very limited in what we can do with respect to the number of crew that we can have on board. We’re very excited about being open but we’re still really under restriction, so it’s not freedom.”
Having had a bad enough time in lockdown, Alan said he doesn’t want to have to turn anyone away from eating in his cafe but that may be the reality.
“We just want to look after people and not be policemen as such,” he said.
Ranges at Olinda is still offering takeaway to cater for those who are not fully vaccinated but Alan just hopes it doesn’t cause any angst with people.
Over the course of the lockdown, Alan said the community had been extremely supportive, something he was very grateful for.
“I just want to thank all of the local people that have been supportive throughout this trying time, that have popped in and had their coffee and picked up their coffee. They’ve been very supportive, that really makes a difference.
“We just take baby steps and we just keep on working on it and I think at the end of the day, we will all be back hopefully, and everyone will be happy.”
