Albany man on lockdown in Spain sounds warning for his home city: Australia is not acting fast enough

An Albany man on lockdown in Spain has sounded the alarm for his old home city, saying Australia is not acting quickly enough to prevent the mass tragedy unfolding around him. Rob Daniel, who opened Albany Backpackers and 1849 Backpackers, is in the normally bustling seaside village of Alcossebre caring for his 96-year-old mother, who has lived in Spain for decades. He has seen Alcossebre transform into something resembling a ghost town, where police outnumber pedestrians and you need ID to enter a supermarket. Spain is enforcing a nationwide lockdown as the number of COVID-19 deaths soars past 2000. People on the streets are being stopped by police — from a distance — and fined if they are not on an essential, once-a-week shopping trip. Teams of people in protective suits are sterilising towns to remove traces of the virus. Mr Daniel said Australia had the benefit of seeing how the virus had affected the likes of Italy, Spain and the UK — but it appeared we had not learned from the mistakes made by other countries. “I think it came as a shock to everyone how fast it happened here in Spain, but it shouldn’t have done,” he said. “Everyone saw what happened to Italy but still, no one was prepared for it. Everyone reacted too slowly, like I believe Australia is doing now. “They’re doing it all by increments in order to save the economy, but it’s too late for that.” Mr Daniel’s wife, Paula, and two children are in Australia, but he is not willing to leave his elderly mother to fend for herself. He said every morning it felt as though he was waking up in a disaster movie. Residents of his town had come up with various ways of trying to boost morale, such as getting children to draw colourful pictures and hang them in windows. He said he was worried about how Australians would cope with a full lockdown when he saw fights breaking out over toilet paper. “Australians hate being told what to do, and it’s a good part of their nature,” he said. “But this is one of those times where you pull your head in and stay inside. You don’t want what’s happening right now in Italy.” Mr Daniel, who used to write a weekly column in the Advertiser called A Sporting Chance, said he feared for his family and his old home city if Australia did not start taking the pandemic more seriously. He said schools should have been shut long ago. Watching from afar, he described it as “like watching a train approach a cliff edge”. “The message would be ‘listen to the medical experts’,” he said. “Protect yourself.”