This article gives a useful summary of Melbourne's six lockdowns. The dates of these have not been so easy to retrieve.
It also provides an indication of why Victoria carried on its second lockdown so devastatingly long - in the first one, a reduction to five cases a day proved horribly inadequate and cases rose within a month to 180. The targeted lockdown of specific postcodes a week earlier was completely inadequate, as has repeatedly proved to be the case around the world and most recently in NSW.
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Article by Joseph Dunstan
Today marks an unpleasant milestone for Melburnians — it's the 200th day lived under lockdown restrictions.
For many of us, the sequence of those days is just a fuzzy memory, smudged into the 17-month pandemic rollercoaster we've endured.
Here's how the city's six lockdowns unfolded.
Lockdown One: 43 days
BEGAN: March 30, 11:59pm
ENDED: May 12, 11:59pm
The local cases recorded each day
But it's worth noting that these settings were not referred to as a "lockdown" at the time.
Instead, we were under "stay-at-home" orders, distinct from the much harsher restrictions that would later be used to defeat the city's second wave of infections.
That distinction has become less important to many people over time, with a common acceptance that we're now in lockdown six — making this period of time the first.
ABC News: Iskhandar Razak
)We entered the lockdown on March 30, when 46 locally acquired cases were detected.
When we emerged more than a month later, the number of new local infections had been driven down to just five.
But it was just a short-lived victory, before the devastating second wave would put chronic underfunding in public health, hotel quarantine leaks and infection control gaps in the spotlight.
Lockdown Two: 111 days
BEGAN: July 8, 11:59pm
ENDED: October 27, 11:59pm
The local cases recorded each day
Today, it's hard to imagine any Australian tier of government holding off entering lockdown if daily cases were above 100, especially given the Delta variant.
Premier Daniel Andrews described Victoria as being "on the cusp of something very, very bad" if no action was taken.
The city-wide lockdown came after authorities realised the targeted lockdown of specific postcodes with high caseloads put in place about a week earlier would not be enough.
Through a well-documented and agonising 111 days, the city was in lockdown, slowly driving down cases which peaked at 687 new infections on August 4.
If you're thinking "hang on, I'm sure it went above 700", you're not wrong.
The figure reported that day was 725, but duplicated cases were appearing regularly in the figures as health authorities battled to find better ways to manage the data.
Victoria exited the second, traumatic lockdown with hard lessons learnt and a sharpened contact-tracing and outbreak response.
Lockdown Three: Five days
BEGAN: February 12, 11:59pm
ENDED: February 17, 11:59pm
The local cases recorded each day
For many Melburnians, November to January almost started to feel normal, as the state enjoyed a streak of days without new infections.
The sun was out and the state had managed to quell a cluster at Black Rock without a lockdown — boosting confidence in Victoria's contact-tracing team.
A fairly tight lid was kept on community transmission until mid-February, when the state was rocked by an outbreak of the Alpha strain of the virus from the Holiday Inn quarantine hotel at Melbourne Airport.
At the time, the Premier described a variant moving at unprecedented "velocity".
The outbreak and the infection control breaches behind it intensified the push to move away from hotels as quarantine facilities in favour of purpose-built facilities.
But this was the shortest of the state's lockdowns, with cases pulled up before the daily figure climbed above five.
Lockdown Four: 14 days
BEGAN: May 27, 11:59pm
ENDED: June 10, 11:59pm
The local cases recorded each day
Another run of several months without community transmission screeched to a halt at the end of May, when authorities called a lockdown in response to a fast-moving outbreak in the city's north.
In the days that followed, contact tracers discovered the outbreak was comprised of two separate clusters.
One, the Kappa variant, had spread from South Australian hotel quarantine.
The other, the Delta variant, was traced back to a leak from Victoria's hotel quarantine system.
Again, authorities identified the variants were spreading more rapidly than previous strains.
It prompted an initial one-week lockdown to be extended for Melbourne, but restrictions eased on June 10, a day of zero new local cases.
Lockdown Five: 12 days
BEGAN: July 15, 11:59pm
ENDED: July 27, 11:59pm
The local cases recorded each day
But just a month later, we were back into lockdown as 10 local cases were recorded on July 15, linked to the growing outbreak in New South Wales.
During this lockdown, we saw transmission at the MCG as well as more typical sites such as apartment complexes and hospitality venues.
The quick lockdown and the swift work of contact tracers managed to pull this outbreak up in just under a fortnight.
Mr Andrews said Victorians had a right to feel proud, but not "boastful" of their efforts to bring things under control.
But once again, it wasn't to last long.
Lockdown Six: 15 days and counting
BEGAN: August 5, 8:00pm
ENDS: ?
The local cases recorded each day
No sooner had we surfaced from lockdown five, the next one was upon us.
While we still don't know how this outbreak began, it's genomically linked to the strain devastating New South Wales.
Within days of detecting the first cases in this outbreak, authorities called a lockdown for the whole state.
While regional Victoria eased out of that lockdown days later, restrictions in Melbourne have only intensified as more mystery cases point to undetected chains of transmission running through the community.
ABC News: Patrick Rocca
)This week, authorities have reintroduced the harshest of the measures used to defeat the second wave, including the controversial nightly curfew and the closure of public playgrounds.
While the Premier has spruiked the critical importance of vaccines as the long-term path out of heavy restrictions, for now, it's high rates of testing that will hopefully see the city defeat another wave and put its sixth lockdown behind it.
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