'I was with about twenty-five year nine students when my phone pinged with the news update: ‘Snap five-day lockdown for Victoria’. I was accompanying the students as a chaplain on a class retreat day. The year twelve leaders smiled as the news broke: it meant Monday’s assessment – their first year twelve certificate task – would be postponed. But after the initial wash of relief there was, or so it seemed to me, a longer pause. Might the promise of a ‘COVID-normal’ 2021 be illusory?' (Introduction)