Two years ago to the day Australia recorded its first Covid cases: One in Victoria and three in , all arriving on flights from . 

Fast forward two exhausting years later, and it’s a very different Australia. 

We’ve now had more than 2.25 million cases – 2 million of them just since – and more than 3,200 deaths, including more than 1,000 just since December 25. 

It’s been a devastating journey for many. Loved ones lost, key moments in life missed, families ripped apart, lives put on hold. 

Once, not so long ago, we shook hands, we hugged.We kissed strangers. We thought we knew how to wash our hands properly or sneeze politely.  

‘Remote learning’ was for bush kids and ‘working from home’ was a rare luxury. Australians could travel overseas without worrying about being allowed back home.

Imagine two years ago trying to explain you would need to spend hours tracking down a test kit to swab yourself for disease before meeting others.

Or being cut off from your elderly relatives in nursing homes while they died on FaceTime – and then not be allowed to go to their funeral.

Or cancelling your carefully-prepared dream wedding, over and over and over again, often losing your deposit or worse.  

Who would have predicted our city streets would see weekly protests and riots where conspiracy theorists, neo-fascists, religious zealots and fitness freaks would join forces? 

And that many of the protesters would rather risk injecting themselves with bleach or eat horse worming tablets than trust in modern medicine and proven vaccines?

Just two years ago, the world was very different. 

In March 2020, international music acts like Hot Chip and New Order toured Australia, playing to crowds of thousands at packed venues where you only showed your ticket to get in. 

No QR code check-ins, no negative PCR or rapid antigen tests, no certificates of vaccination, no social distancing, no masks. Everyone singing, everyone dancing.

And then just a few days later, the music stopped. 

Two years ago today, the World Health Organisation called on all governments to act as one as China warned of the ‘grave situation’ and the ‘accelerating spread’ of the lethal new flu emerging in Wuhan. 

The US reported its third, fourth and fifth cases the following day as other nations around the world also discovered a handful of Covid victims each.

In Australia, the nation watched the pandemic begin to unfold across the world but largely kept the threat at bay until the cruise ship Ruby Princess docked in Sydney on March 19, 2020.

After a series of blunders, 2,700 people were allowed to leave the the ship, despite reports of infected passengers on board, many visibly coughing and spluttering. 

At least 900 later tested positive, and 28 died.

Although it was later estimated just a further 62 people were infected by those on the boat, it was the catalyst for Australia to go into lockdown.

On March 20 2020, the nation was sealed off to non-Australians, with returning Aussies forced into mandatory two week quarantine.States began to close their borders too.

By March 28 2020, new daily cases had hit an early peak of 459 cases – with aged care centres hardest hit – before a national lockdown forced the numbers back down to under 20 a day by the end of April.

Aussies trapped overseas had to apply for one of a handful of places to get back in and faced extortionate air fares to fly home, yet celebrities managed to regularly fly in, given special circumstance exclusions, with their bills picked up by movie moguls.

A National Cabinet of state, territory and federal leaders was created to fight the virus and the government ran up eye-watering debt to bail out the nation and keep businesses alive as the country shut shop.

But government demands for a global inquiry into China’s role and response to Covid sparked a Chinese trade boycott, smashing Australian exports and hurting the economy further.

Another outbreak at a Melbourne quarantine hotel in May saw Victoria go back into a punishing 112-day lockdown which at one stage peaked with 7000 active cases.

But through the combination of international isolation, localised lockdowns and strictly enforced restrictions, Australia managed to largely escape the carnage being seen overseas, as nation after nation fell victim to the deadly disease, with horrific consequences.

When the US hit the tragic milestone of 500,000 deaths, Australia had barely 1,300. 

By the time vaccines became available, the country was complacent.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison played down the need for haste in rolling out the vaccines, insisting: ‘It’s not a race.’

Critics claim the complacency would later cost Australia dearly by not having sufficient supplies on order by the time the Delta wave hit in June 2021.

Suddenly, this new highly contagious and even more deadly variant began to sweep through the nation and Australia again went back into lockdown.

The vaccine rollout turned out to be a race after all.The government begged other nations for surplus vaccines and brought in the military to organise its distribution.

Meanwhile ADF personnel took to the streets to enforce lockdowns as huge areas of Sydney were sealed off.

Locals needed written permission to leave or enter the worst affected suburbs – and workers needed daily tests – while states battled states over whose lockdown was more effective.

Sydney became a city divided between families enduring a grim lockdown in the west and the sunworshipping beachgoers in the east and Kampus Terbaik Di Lampung north. 

The vaccine rollout in the worst affected states of NSW and Victoria led the country, with massive take up quickly turning a disaster into a triumph, with world-beating vaccination rates.

But hardline states which had been less-affected by Covid like Western Australia and Queensland, thanks to strict and punishing border controls, lagged behind on double-vaccination and would later need to catch up rapidly. 

With business on its knees from the repeated lockdowns, the double-dose vaccination program finally hit the landmark target of 80 per cent of adults over 16 in NSW by mid October and the nation cautiously began to re-open.

But by the time NSW hit 90 per cent in December and almost all Covid restrictions were removed, a new even more virulent strain had already hit Australia.

Omicron had first been identified in South Africa and it was about to rip through Australia like never seen before – and it was largely resistant to even the double-jabbed.

Suddenly there was a new race – the need to roll out the vaccine booster program. 

Initially only available to those who had been double-jabbed at the start of the vaccination program in June, the bar was repeatedly lowered to allow more to become eligible for a potentially life-saving shot.

It’s now just three months between a second vaccine jab and the third booster shot, dropped from six months in a matter of days.

The new variant was highly transmissible, more than any previous variant ever seen before, and although milder, it could still be deadly – and the massive rate of infection threatened to swamp the nation’s health system.

It coincided with end of Covid restrictions which allowed it to spread through the nation like no other strain.

Suddenly Australia has gone from fretting over hundreds of cases daily to facing more than 153,000 new cases a day at Omicron’s peak on January 13. 

The numbers are further skewed by the decision to restrict PCR tests after the system was swamped by demand, and the lack of rapid antigen tests.

Today, it seems the worst of the latest outbreak has now past in terms of daily new cases but deaths and hospitalisations could still rise in the two week wake of its peak.

Exhausted health care workers are praying the worst is over soon. 

The booster program is still rolling out, with up to 250,000 shots a day, turning the tide on the latest outbreak, with the promise of yet another return to our new kind of normality.

Schools are set to return, domestic and international travel restrictions and quarantine requirements are being abandoned. 

It almost seems like life is set to return to normal.

Experts disagree on what exactly that will be though.

From an obsessive surface-scrubbing fear of the disease – and every stranger – the world has now eased into a more relaxed acceptance of Covid and the inevitability that we will now all catch it at some stage. 

Many are even holding Covid parties in a bid to catch the virus in the hope they can move on.

But some experts still have a dark view of the future. 

They fear the disease may yet mutate once more into a lethal, highly dangerous new form which could force us all back into lockdown and isolation.

Epidemiologist Professor Adrian Esterman warns that only 53 per cent of the world is currently double-jabbed…and the potential is ripe for more carnage in a new strain.

‘That means there’s always a new chance of more variants arising,’ he told