As the COVID-19 crisis continues and cases within Australia and particularly NSW continue to rise, its been considered a good time to be a rural resident.

Out here where my family lives we are a solid 2 ½ hour drive from the nearest capital city where the majority of cases are taking place.  So far there is only a handful cases of Coronavirus within a hundred kilometres of us all together.

As such people in situations similar to us haven’t been panic buying.  We didn’t all go mad stocking up on toilet paper, we haven’t cleaned off shelves and we haven’t gotten into fistfights over a bag of rice.  For the most part us rural folk have taken it pretty calm, and in small communities like the one I inhabit, you don’t take ever single item of a product off a shelf as the people you are depriving are your neighbours, your community members and your friends.

Yep, the panic buying had been contained to the big cities.  But now its not.  It’s hitting small country towns and its not small country town people that are doing.

It’s Raiders from the Big City!

It’s been amazing!  Tiny towns with populations of well under a thousand are seeing more new faces than they have in years.  And these are not tourists – these are food-filchers!  People driving out from capital cities to hit up every butchers, every bakers and every small supermarket they can, to grab whatever they can, and then return home.  One can only assume the candlestick makers will be next.

In fact it’s not just people in cars – it’s entire busloads! Buses pulling up at little supermarkets in one-horse towns and twenty people disembarking.  These people head straight into the local stores and come out carrying as many bags of groceries as they can lift.  These raiders leave barren shelves behind and nothing for the local people, who depend on these stores, to buy.

Is it greed that is prompting these people to come out and grab all the tucker and toilet paper they can tote?  Is it desperation?

Because no matter the motivation – it is NOT ON!

Big City people don’t get it.  Country people are not surrounded by stores where if one store is out of a product they can simply try a half dozen others down the road.  If you raid a store, then that leaves NOTHING for the locals!  These stores, due to their remote, don’t get restocked every day.  And if that store is empty, the next store is usually a loooong way away.  The town I live outside of has one small butchers, one small bakers and one very small supermarket/bottle-o.  Besides bags of chips at the servo that’s it for places to get groceries.  If those shops are empty I have to drive an extra 10 minutes to the next town which also only has a few small shops.  If they too are empty, which increasingly they have been, my next option is to drive 60km to Mudgee where the major supermarkets are in the hopes that their shelves are also not bare.  Should I have to do that because Big City people have depleted their own stores in panic buying and now are doing the same to us?

This isn’t just in our area, this is happening all over NSW and Victoria!  Small town locals going home without any food for their families because these busloads of city slickers have come out and nicked all the grub!  And it has to stop!  Not only because of the effect on the locals, but the potential spread of COVID-19.  People are coming from places like Sydney and Melbourne where the virus is growing ever more rampant, and driving through town after town where the entire populaces are so far uninfected. I wonder if these raiders realize, or care, that if country people get sick the food shortages will only get worse since we are the ones that grow all the food!

So, I say this to you raiders.  DO.  NOT.  COME.  HERE!  You are not welcome!  You take all our food and risk infecting us all!  And why?  Because you all couldn’t stop yourselves going nuts and panic-buying out your thousands of stores until there was nothing left.  Stay in your damn capital cities and wait for the stores to restock.  Because when you come here and take all our food, we have nowhere else to go.  We didn’t panic buy, we were sensible.  And now we are paying for it because our cupboards are not overflowing since we didn’t want to deprive our neighbours of their tucker – because, you know, that’s what good people do.

So please.  If you are from a capital city do the right thing, especially these school holidays.  Wait for your stores in the big smoke to restock.  Don’t come and take all our food and risk spreading COVID-19 into rural communities that have managed to remain unaffected thus far.  We managed to make it through the bushfires, we as a society need to pull together to make it through this too.

We, your rural cousins, thank you for your cooperation.

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