APPLECROSS families are doing the “Covid Cooee” to check their neighbours are doing okay during the Covid-19 lockdown.

The daily “cooee” debuted last Thursday night with residents calling out from balconies and yards to their neighbours and friends.

“It is an opportunity to call out if you need something,” Applecross resident Mary Wilberforce-Casey said.

Local Beverly Banovich came up with the idea to “connect up folks in the neighbourhood”.

“It is just for five minutes or so from 8pm, as by then it’s quiet in the suburb and the sound can carry a long way,” she said.

Uniquely Australian

“Cooee is uniquely Australian – the call to locate people and connect. 

“Apparently in some indigenous language it translates to mate and friend.”

Ms Banovich said the cooee was “a way to feel connected as we are all isolated, but we are all in this together”.

“It is a nightly ritual to touch base with the community, like marking the end of another day, and for those living on their own it’s human interaction – a real voice as opposed to a device,” she said.

“It is really exciting when you hear a response to your call. It makes me smile.”

Ms Banovich said her 

idea originates from a family holiday in Venice when there was “hardly a soul in St Mark’s Square”, and she, her husband “Dave and young daughters Renee and Jessie went to each corner of the square and cooeed to each other”.

by ALEXANDRA CASEY

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