It’s fair to say the people in the northern rivers of New South Wales generally do not like being told what to do by the government.
In a region with a free-thinking, anti-authoritarian reputation, and a long history of anti-vaccination sentiment, the requirement to get the Covid jab for work or leisure purposes was never going to find a warm welcome.
“I’ve never been vaccinated in my life but I decided I needed to do it because I’m a film-maker and I need to travel a lot,” Jahvis Loveday says. “I just feel it sucks that we have to be forced to do it, but it’s a different world.”
There is simmering anger and a sense of weary resignation as people submit to the vaccination. The issue continues to divide families and strain friendships. Finding locals willing to openly declare they have been vaccinated is a challenge.
Yet despite the antipathy, the drive to get the population vaccinated is gathering momentum. As of 7 November, 85.5% of Byron shire residents had received their first dose and 75% their second. The numbers are similar in the Tweed shire where first-dose vaccination stands at 89.8% and second dose at 80.1%.
Dr Robyn O’Grady, who has been working as a GP in Byron Bay and Suffolk Park since 2017, hopes people are thinking about the vulnerable in the community and the lack of hospital beds in the region.
“I guess there is an element of [vaccination] being mandated, but we do mandate for health reasons all the time. Smoking, for example,” she says. “And a lot of people are moving here during Covid-19 so I think there’s a change here in perspective around vaccinating.”
Mayoral candidate Asren Pugh says people’s perception of the Byron shire as a vaccine-resistant area is “overblown”, with a loud minority exaggerating the extent of anti-vaccination sentiment.
“What we’ve seen with Covid-19 is that there are a whole lot of other things in the equation in making a decision – the actual real danger that you or family and friends might get sick – and the various rules and mandates are just pushing people over the line,” he says.
“Lots of people reacted strongly when the mandate came in and have since come around because, ultimately, you can be as outraged as you like but there’s a point when there are consequences.”
‘I want to keep my job’
For some, the potential consequences include losing their job, including Sonya Will, who works in aged and dementia care.
She lives with two unvaccinated people and says she is “still very much in their camp about it”.
“I was really, really annoyed at first, but now I’ve just resigned myself to it,” she says. “It’s what has to be done because I want to live my life and be free. I just wanted to have a choice and it was purely because I want to keep my job. I love my job; I’ve had it for 13 years and I didn’t want to lose it.”
Max Faulkner is equally explicit about why he is getting the vaccine.
“Coercion. All the reasons they are making you get it: travel, work, trying to get interstate”, he says through his well-fitted mask.
“I don’t really have any faith in [the government] running anything and I don’t feel they’re being fair. It seems quite tyrannical. If they’d just explained things better, people would have done it. Now they’re just forcing people and there’s confusion that goes along with everything. Nothing has been clear from the get-go.”
Edan Agarom, who has spent time in lockdown in Melbourne, has a more prosaic reason.
“I just want to go to the pub,” he says. “It’s been months – I just want a beer. I know that for a lot of people it’s a difficult decision and a tough dilemma [to get vaccinated] but the way that things are looking right now, we’re living in a new world and it’s a tough sacrifice.”
O’Grady says medical professionals in the area have been able to alleviate the fears of many people who have been misinformed about the vaccine.
Steve Thomas, who lives in the Mullumbimby hinterland, was initially reluctant because he was hearing the vaccines were “unsafe”.
“I soon learned that it wasn’t as bad as they were projecting there for a while,” he says. “And a lot of smart people I knew were doing it. Just do your research and have a little bit of trust.”
However, he admits he is selective about who in the community he tells.
‘It’s a choice between vaccine or Covid-19’
Backpackers Anthony and Thomas went to a pop-up clinic run by NSW Health at the surf club, because they are returning to northern France in a month and need to be vaccinated for the journey. Mel was there because her family is in Queensland and she wants to visit them for Christmas. Like Sonya, florist Ochre loves her job and says she has to be vaccinated to keep it, despite growing up in a “pretty alternative” family and never having vaccines.
Massage therapist Kat says she hadn’t felt the need to be vaccinated and was “dragging her feet”.
“In this area, we were in a nice bubble so it didn’t seem incredibly pressing,” she says. “It wasn’t that I was anti-vax; I was more of a fence-sitter. I was waiting for more data and I felt there was no need to rush out and get [vaccinated]. It just didn’t seem real – obviously it was – but a lot of people in this area didn’t have it personally affecting them so they didn’t feel a huge drive.”
But when the government announced mandates and she needed to be vaccinated for her work, Kat just went out and did it.
As they head into the clinic, Steve and his friend Graham say: “Life’s too hard without it now; it’s just become too difficult not to [be vaccinated].
“It shouldn’t have got to the stage where you’ve become an anti-vaxxer just because you ask questions,” Steve says. “It’s OK to ask questions. It’s OK to ask, ‘what is it?’ It just means you want to be informed.”
O’Grady is urging those who are still unsure to come forward and talk about vaccination with their GP.
“I think the important thing for people to realise is that as we open up, it’s not a choice between vaccine or no vaccine,” she says. “It’s a choice between vaccine or Covid-19.”