LYN WALLIS

(She/her)
3D printing artist and maker

8 July 2021
Wiradjuri, Dhudhuroa, Waveroo Country

My name is Lyn Wallis and I’m a 3D printing artist and maker living in regional Victoria in a tiny little town called Baranduda in the Albury–Wodonga NSW–Victoria border region. I live in a beautiful place with lots of trees and open space around. We are in an area with a lot of bush, so there isn’t that sense of being trapped in a space. What has been hard is that [the] whole region has been wrestling with what I would call the fairness of the lockdowns.

When it first happened, we were separated from Albury for some time and that was just chaos, and even getting back across the border, a lot of businesses were destroyed. That’s been the hard part, watching the small businesses go down. The thing is, once you lose something here, you don’t get it back so easily. That’s the hard thing, watching other bits of the community kind of crumble and looking round and going, “Oh, that’s not there anymore. That’s not there anymore,” knowing how hard [they] fought for that in the first place, to get that kind of thing in a regional town.

We’re all mentally fatigued. I don’t even know all the regional rules now. You just go, “Yeah, whatever. I think I can go to Albury that’s fine. I’m not going to go any further because it’s just too hard to travel around at this time.” But it’s been very, very confusing and not handled very well. I think that first year you’d go, “Okay. Everyone’s just finding their feet. This has never happened before,” but you just expect them to do better now, I think. I missed my dad’s 80th. When you’re in a border community, how far you can go [is] very unclear. We’ve been ringing them to go, “Actually, if I go to the Central Coast, what happens?” For me, it’s just that I can’t get to my parents because they’re still in what’s classed as a red zone, even though there [are] no cases up there. I can’t wait to get up to see them.

I had my first jab. The AstraZeneca one was pretty freely available. It does give you confidence, I
do feel more confident knowing that if you pick something up, you’ll get sick probably but you’re not going to die. That’s the thing. Last time I saw my parents, I’d had the first one and I felt good about that. I think everybody’s just trying to find a shape of it that they can sort of live with because it’s been going on so long.

I dream about travel almost every night, I don’t know if it’s like a metaphor for change. I dreamt I was trying to pack for a flight last night, and sometimes it’s a train. I know travel can mean just change. But I also wake up and think, “Oh, God, I really want to get on a plane.” I love New Zealand and I used to do these little quick trips probably twice a year. I’d go for three days to Wellington because I love Wellington. Or Singapore. That’s the other place. They’re the two places that are most likely to become travel bubbles, so I’m waiting for that.