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THREE LONG MONTHS OF LOCKDOWN IN VICTORIA WILL SEND ANYONE A LITTLE STIR-CRAZY. AS CURFEW LIFTS, CAN A FLAT-OUT RUN IN FERRARI’S FINEST RESTORE A LITTLE SANITY?

- DYLAN CAMPBELL

THIS IS GOING to be the biggest test of the Ferrari’s front-lift system yet. At the end of the heavily graffitied Hosier Lane in Melbourne’s CBD is the most diabolical alleyway entrance you have ever seen. Its devilish dip is scarred at its lowest depression with the last wincing moments of many a front bumper. I push the button to raise the nose. Brrrrrr. There’s an audible chime and a small graphic in the cluster advises the front is raised. We’re going in.

The clock has just passed midnight, Monday, November 9, 2020. The date and time matters for Victorians, for these are our first minutes of ‘freedom’. A virus all-but defeated, the ‘ring of steel’ that surrounded Australia’s second-largest metropolis has now lifted, and we may now venture further than 25km afield. Not that it really matters much in the grand scheme of an awful pandemic, but for the first time in 112 long, often heart-breaking, difficult but mostly just boring days, we can go for a proper drive, on a proper road; not just to Coles and back.

For now, though, there’s a photographer barking orders at me as I find myself in the broken heart of Melbourne itself. Though lit as brightly as ever, the CBD, as it has been for three months, is still. There’s the hiss of a distant street sweeper; the hum of a Camry Uber gliding past. At one point, a white council van zooms up to a nearby city bin, the anonymous nozzle of a gurney protrudes from the side door, blasts the bin for a few moments, and then zooms straight back off again. Virus fighters.