By Taylah Eastwell
The Hills have been plunged into yet another snap lockdown just one week after restrictions were eased, and in Upwey, businesses and local groups are feeling the mental health effects.
Premier Daniel Andrews addressed media just after 4pm on Thursday 5 August, announcing that the state would return to lockdown restrictions from 8pm.
The news came as an unexpected blow for many in the Hills, with businesses and schools only just reopening their doors and returning to face-to-face learning following Lockdown 5.0.
Owner of Upwey’s Enchanted Pines gift store, Cat, said she was “in shock” that another lockdown was announced so soon.
“By this lockdown, I really don’t know what to say,” she said.
“I’m over it. It’s devastating, and like many businesses you’ve got it in the back of your mind whether you’ll be the business that doesn’t survive the next lockdown. I feel we’ve all used our safety net of finances during other lockdowns but it’s just getting worse and worse as it goes,” she said.
Her Enchanted gift store and coffee shop has again been transformed, with the gift section cordoned off and the shop back to serving take-away only.
“I was obviously expecting another one because being a business owner we have to be realistic. It’s OK to be positive and everything but we have to keep planning as if there is going to be another lockdown. Businesses don’t have the chance to plan for anything anymore,” Cat said.
“When we do come out of lockdown, it’s not like being fully open again, it takes a while to pick back up. Usually around two, three weeks pass before we see people starting to come back and feeling comfortable with spending again, because lots might be casual and not getting paid,” she said.
For members of the Upwey Men’s Shed, who still don’t have a shed to meet in, turning to online meetings has helped the men through.
President Gerran Wright said the men are “used to all of this locking down now” and continue to support each other virtually.
“We sort of got around not being able to meet by meeting virtually now. We have a Zoom meeting and have nominated one of our members as Zoom captain and he co-ordinates the meetings,” Mr Wright said.
The men check in each Monday and Wednesday and provide support and laughter to keep everyone’s spirits up.
“We sort of went through the ‘what the hell am I doing?’ phase with it all last year and now we’ve got it all worked out and everyone knows what to do, but sometimes people have problems with the NBN and can’t get a strong enough signal to hook in,” he said.
“I think that it is important that we get together on a regular basis. A lot of the guys, after they’d retired, had lots of friendships in the workplace but not many in their local community. This has created a real avenue for a lot of guys to make friendships with people in their local community, and personally myself I have a whole bunch of new friends that I never had before,” Mr Wright said.
Owner of Shangri-La Hair and Beauty, Brady Matsen said dealing with the general public during a pandemic has been “full on”.
“It’s quite a full on job in itself (hairdressing), we always have to be talking, then we have to go home and do it, we already do struggle with mental health because we always have to be too high and because of that we get too low,” Ms Matsen explained.
Ms Matsen said it has been difficult trying to rearrange appointments with so many people needing to reschedule appointments lost to the lockdowns.
“Clients are getting more and more mentally unstable and taking it out on us. If we need to change an appointment we have to slot 50 people in, whereas it would normally be five, and if we can’t do what they want people are hanging up on us and being rude,” she said.
Some clients have even asked to have their hair done illegally against lockdown restrictions.
According to Ms Matsen, the beauty industry has also taken a larger hit, with many budding hairdressers refusing to finish their courses.
“There’s no more hairdressers. Not many people are finishing their trade and there aren’t many in the industry. Facebook sites I’m on are all looking for staff and can’t find any because workers are now demanding percentages of what they make or to rent their own chair or invoice you for their work rather than being paid the minimum wage, which is ridiculously low for what we do and put up with, lots are turning to home hairdressing and I don’t blame them,” she said.
On the business side of things, by the time we get grants it’s too little too late. One day I might have tax coming out, another day superannuation, another day rent, every day there is money coming out so my account is already in deficit a couple of grand so by the time we get the government grant a few weeks later it doesn’t really help with running costs at all, and none of my staff are getting paid a cent,” she said.
“People are presenting with mental health issues from all of the stress they are going through and we have to deal with it as if we are psychologists when we really aren’t dealing ourselves,” she said.
Despite the difficulties, the Upwey community sticks together, according to Cat.
“We all check in on each other and go over and see each other. We talk to our neighbours. Each one of us wants all of us to survive. Upwey has been lucky to have a good community that tries their best to support us when they can,” Cat said.
