A Surprise Announcement

I have to admit that it came as something of a surprise. After ten weeks of being warned about the dangers of venturing outside our front doors, now Dan Andrews has decided that it is something we should all do. It was only a few days ago that he reluctantly allowed us to have a maximum of five visitors to our homes. Now we will soon be free to have a party with 20 guests. We will also be free to resume travel within the state and stay overnight wherever and whenever we wish.

I think it would be fair to say that we were not expecting such rapid changes. It was the Premier who had been saying over and over that any changes would only be introuduced slowly and carefully. His favourite mantra is "we only have one chance to do this right". I don't know what brought on such a drastic change of mind. Perhaps he watched some of Donald Trump's announcements and was inspired to follow suit.

Although things that were formally regarded as extremely risky are now apparently quite safe, I still think that there is no real imperative to drastically change our behaviour. Of course the freedom to travel, without worrying whether or not you were going to be pulled over by the next Highway Patrol, will be a great relief.

This also means that we will no longer be restricted to a maximum of ten riders on Ghostrider rides, although personally we feel that the time is not yet right for unrestricted rides. I think that June will be a transition period and maybe we will be ready to return to something resembling our previous ride schedule at the beginning of July. I guess time will tell how effective the state's new strategy will turn out to be.

In the meantime, we are getting close to returning to Melbourne. It has been a wonderful time to relax, think, write, ride and also do some much-needed maintenance, but it was never going to be permanent. At this stage our plan is to return home sometime in the next few days.Read more