I watched the oddest cricket international match last night - Australia v New Zealand at the SCG.  As large gatherings have been now been banned in Oz in an attempt to combat the spread of coronavirus, the cricketing powers that be made the decision to play the match without spectators.  It made me realise how important the crowd is in building the atmosphere in a game.....someone said to me it was more like watching a club game than an international.  Until this virus is under control, I think that crowd-less games will be as good as it gets in many codes.  Many more codes are likely to abandon playing altogether.

Had a fun day out with a bunch of other photographers at the annual Motueka-Nelson-Marlborough challenge.  This image won me a chocolate bunny in the random group photo scavenger hunt challenge.  Yum!

Arrived home after the photography to hear that New Zealand is virtually closing it's doors to visitors by imposing tough self-isolation rules in its effort to combat the virus.  Every person entering New Zealand from anywhere in the world will be required to self-isolate for 14 days.  Pretty tough to justify a 4 week trip here if 2 of those weeks have to be in self-isolation.

In addition to visitors arriving on flights, cruise ships have been banned from coming to New Zealand, until at least June 30. 

Our tourism industry is about to get hammered.  

These announcements came after the news that NZ has had its 6th coronavirus case confirmed.  All the cases so far have been in Auckland and so far - touch wood - the South Island remains clear.  Things are certainly going to get a lot worse before they start to get any better though.  

Sadly but understandably, the National Remembrance Event for the March 15 terror attack on two mosques in Christchurch has been cancelled due to concerns about tracking those in attendance if someone was later found to have coronavirus.  


The world is changing so rapidly at the moment, and not for the better......