KIAH & KELSIE LEE MULLER

(She/her)
Retail worker & student

6 October 2021
Wadawurrung Country

Kiah: My name’s Kiah Muller, I’m an Aboriginal woman and we’ve been living in regional Victoria throughout the COVID lockdown.

Kelsie: I’m Kelsie Muller and I’m Kiah’s younger sister.

Kiah: At the very start [of the pandemic, being in
a regional area] it didn’t seem any different at all, because I could work every single day and see my friends. [I work at Cotton On in the warehouse.] But when it got to proper lockdown, same as Metro,
it got really boring. [We could only see our friends over Zoom and social media].

Kelsie: At the start, I could still go to school and stuff, but then when [we went into] lockdown, it was quite challenging. School’s been the hardest thing for me, just trying to do it online and actually do it. [It’s hard] trying to find the motivation to actually sit in your room all day and do work [and you also you lose the connection with your friends when you’re not seeing them all the time].

Kiah: We couldn’t access gyms during lockdown.

Kelsie: It was three years ago the last time I had a proper footy season.

Kiah: Kelsie and I would both set up a little gym in the shed and we’d just take it in turns of working out there with the weights that dad has had since he was 20.

Kelsie: I was doing weights with weed killer. That’s pretty good. The handles on the bottles made it really helpful.

Kiah: The pandemic [has had a huge impact on] mental health, being locked inside. There’s been a lot of people taking their own lives and stuff that we know personally.

Kelsie: In our Geelong region there’s been six or eight people under the age of 18. Boys under the age of 18 who have taken their own lives.

Kiah: And I don’t reckon that the lockdown has helped [the isolation] whatsoever.

Kiah: [Earlier this year were able to go visit our family on Elcho Island]. It was really touch and go, [and] we didn’t know if we could go or not, [but] as soon as the restrictions lifted, we literally just left and got out of Victoria as soon as we could. We had to get border passes just to get into New South Wales and into Queensland and then into the Northern Territory. When we got to Darwin, the day after we left to fly to Elcho Island, Darwin went into lockdown, so we just missed all of it and then got to just be on Country in Elcho Island and it was really cool. We were lucky that we got away [and] it was really awesome to be able to experience something new while there’s a pandemic going on.

Kelsie: I’ve learned that being outside of your house can have the biggest impact on your mental health. I didn’t realize how much it [going to school] actually helped me, socialising with people. Now we’re, “Oh my God, we are going back to school. That is so good.” But we would’ve not been like that before Corona started. We would’ve been, “Oh God, school’s back.”