Voice of Real Australia is a regular newsletter from Australian Community Media, which has journalists in every state and territory. Today's is written by ACM national agriculture writer Chris McLennan.
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Before COVID-19 was the Y2K bug.
Or the cybersecurity emergency that wasn't.
I was at a gathering last week where a speaker reminded us all how life had started out that year during the pandemic.
To be there at all, brushing shoulders with a big crowd would have been unthinkable.
No mask, no demands to check in or provide a triple-shot immunisation certificate.
How incredibly quickly life has changed.
I no longer look around in fright when I hear someone cough or sneeze at the supermarket.
But I still look around, that habit might stay with me for a time.
Another community-wide emergency which has stuck with me is Y2K.
Unless you were around at the end of 1999 you most likely wouldn't know what that was.
The world was gripped in a panic.
Experts told us the switch from 1999 to 2000 would wreak havoc on computer systems.
Apparently it was something to do with computers not be able to recognise the switch in the two-digit code.
No-one really knew what was going to happen.
Even back in those days, most workplaces pretty much danced to the tune of technology.
I was the editor of a newspaper when "it" was supposed to happen.
I well remember heading along to cover my town's New Year's Eve celebrations that night and take pictures of the party-goers.
Fireworks, music, crowds it was quite a night.
I spoke to several people on the night who also feared what was happening under the cover of darkness.
They thought the power going out would be a signal that the experts were right.
I actually missed the actual countdown to 2000.
My company wanted a person from each of their offices to stand-by at midnight in case "it" happened.
As I was already working, I volunteered to head into the office and watch the clock.
Would the servers explode into flames, would people come screaming into the streets, what sort of apocalypse was about to unfold?
Well, nothing happened. Not a single thing.
Nothing, except I had missed the money shot at the town's celebrations.
It was like a hoax had been inflicted on the world.
I remember people felt let down by it all. We were robbed of an experience.
After months and months of scaremongering, we all expected something to happen.
So we did what the world does best, we turned on the experts and outed them as dills.
We thought so from the outset, we said smugly.
We felt better for it.
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