Helicopters, military door knocks and 9pm curfews: Five years since Sydney’s dystopian divide

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There was a moment in western Sydney, just over five years ago, when it felt like the world had collapsed.

It struck people at different times. To some, it was when they heard the whirr of police helicopters demanding people return home. To others, it was the sight of officers patrolling empty streets on horseback. Others felt the apocalypse in seeing the military doorknock residents in Granville, or hearing of people fined for leaving their suburbs.

This was western Sydney during the 2021 lockdown: a whirlwind of death, a storm of disease and economic collapse leaving nothing behind. Sunday will mark exactly half a decade since the restrictions were lifted after they throttled the region and left nothing the same.

To Boraa Dannoun, the realisation that his world had upended came as he was organising a Zoom funeral for his father, only days after he had buried his mother. Both of his parents died of COVID in the final week of the 2021 lockdowns, buried just as the restrictions were lifted.

“They died so quickly, and in such quick succession that there was no time to prepare ourselves,” he said. “The core of the family was shattered. You cannot go through the stages of grief as you normally would. I felt numb, in denial.

“Because of the restrictions, nobody could give condolences in person. We were prevented from saying farewell on our terms – even how we said goodbye was controlled, making the most sacred moment of our lives feel entirely impersonal and surreal.”

The courier driver, who was living in Punchbowl at the time, remembers the worst week of his life in excruciating detail. He remembers each parents’ final words to him, the late-night dashes to different hospitals, the confusion and the sinking, crushing helplessness.

Between June and October 2021, 374 people died of COVID in NSW. The 12 “LGAs of concern”, which included Bayside, Blacktown, Burwood, Campbelltown, Canterbury-Bankstown, Cumberland, Fairfield, Georges River, Liverpool, Parramatta, Strathfield and Penrith, had the highest number of cases across the four-month stretch.

From late August 2021, residents in those LGAs were banned from going outside from 9pm to 5am, and were restricted to a 5km radius for grocery shopping and exercise. They were only allowed out of their homes for one hour a day.

These restrictions were also heavily policed, the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research in 2021 found police disproportionately fined residents from those western Sydney LGAs, with the bureau finding no evidence of “non-compliant activities” in the region.

It was amid those restrictions that Mike Searle had to eulogise his grandmother via video, with none of his family to grieve with him.

“I was probably closest to her more than anyone else in the world,” he said. “And we’re sitting there, and I’m watching myself eulogise my grandmother with my ‘bubble buddy’, with her little certificate that allowed her to be there.

“I think it has changed my philosophy on shared grief,” he said.