Sunday, 5 April 2020
Government House
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC QC, Governor of New South Wales

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After COVID-19 is over we will appreciate the great Australian outdoors more than ever.

But at the moment, most of us are spending a great proportion of our time indoors and connecting remotely with our family and friends and with our workplaces. In this environment, where we have become very aware of what we can’t do, what are some of the things that we can do to keep ourselves healthy and active?

Well, leaving the house for exercise is allowed. If you enjoy going for a walk, if that’s part of your usual routine – keep to that. And if it isn’t now may be a good time to give it a try.

If you are a gym junkie, you may be able to adapt your program to do that at home, perhaps following an online instructor. Yoga is a perfect activity to do at this time. I have one friend who is doing her Zen meditation class online.

The advice I have been given, both working at home and around students doing online schooling, is that routine is important. I’m told, for example, that it is good to start or day as you normally would, start work or lessons at the normal time and continue on like that throughout the day.

Take your usual breaks – perhaps you could go for a short walk, do a 10 minute exercise regime – whatever is best for you so that you can concentrate again.

There are certainly some important life lessons in all of this. Self-reliance and self-motivation will be important.

In the end, we want this time to be a time when we can look back and be proud of how we responded.