Kmart stores across the Melbourne region were absolutely heaving last night as the restrictions eased at 11.59pm, allowing shoppers to once again enter retail stores.
After over 100 days of being closed for trade and reverting to online deliveries and click and collect points, Melburnians were wildly keen to get back into their beloved big retail therapy stores to get that bump of serotonin that only the fluorescent lighting and picking up rogue items at Kmart can deliver.
The midnight openings of the big stores across Melbourne drew wild lines of people, both waiting to pay at the checkouts and waiting to get inside the stores. Footage of the fucked lines was posted online by @couponwithcoco, a self-confessed shopping addict, who shared collected video from stores including Campbellfield and Burwood East.
@couponwithcoco It’s the lack of ✨social distancing✨ for me #kmart #kmarthacks #melbournelockdown #getonthebeers
My God, it’s like Boxing Day sales on a full bag.
This is a truly unhinged way to spend the wee hours of the morning in Melbourne which is still pretty bloody cold overnight.
Kmart Managing Director Ian Bailey told 3AW today that the Melbourne stores saw around 10,000 people between midnight and 6am this morning.
“In most of those stores we had about 500 people through in the first half-hour or so, and between midnight and 6am, about 10,000 in total,” he said.
Melbourne hairdresser Coco Devile shared his experience of waiting in line at his local Spotlight at midnight with his mum, buying some late-night wool supplies and hitting the first shop in months that wasn’t “Coles to buy some chicken”.
Not everyone’s stoked that stores like Kmart and Spotlight reopened right on midnight, with many taking to Twitter to express their concerns about behaviour like this possibly leading to another serious outbreak of coronavirus.
Melbourne what’s going on? I just watched a video taken in the carpark of Spotlight in Bayswater… packed !! What on earth could you need at midnight from Spotlight?? 🤷♀️
— Kirsty Callander (@kirsty112233) October 27, 2020
Kind of worried at what I’m seeing on the socials..folks lining up at bars, KMart etc
Don’t be dickheads Melbourne! This could so easily go pear shaped again.
We don’t want upset Bec Judd anymore than she has been.
— Tracie Winch (@blardyblah) October 27, 2020
https://twitter.com/Aeeek27/status/1321191959168307201?s=20
I can’t believe people are camping outside of kmart in Melbourne like guys really ?!?
I’m excited too but we just hit zero two days in a row don’t fuck it up.
— Kate Naylor (@k_Van95) October 27, 2020
After two days of zero new cases and zero deaths, Victoria has recorded two new cases, two deaths, three cases with unknown sources, and a rolling 14-day average of 2.7. Let’s not go and fuck this up for ourselves, hey Melbs?
