QuaraNTine Day 8

I'm halfway through quarantine. My daily routine has evolved into wake up, stretching exercises (YouTube, 12 minutes), breakfast, talk to Ken, emails and admin, Tai Chi (one hour), lunch, read, talk to friends (thanks, friends, for the soul-sustaining phone calls), TV/Netflix (I loved The Chair), star jumps, dinner, TV/Netflix, read, sleep. And repeat x 14.

I tried to do some walking. I can take 6 steps in my cabin and another 8 outside on the balcony. I decided to walk 1000 steps in a sort of figure-eight pattern. By the time I finished, I was so dizzy from all the turns that I abandoned this idea. But thrillingly, yesterday was my scheduled slot for laundry. Going to the laundry involves a 200m/340 step excursion, so I went there three times, just because I could. This was terribly exciting as it was the furthest I've walked in a week. I also saw new people. Fellow quarantiners in far-off cabins! Yes, they exist!

Howard Springs is a no-alcohol site. Sitting on my balcony as the tropical dusk falls, I dream of a glass of chilled white or a frosty martini ... but I have managed to survive without either. The food has been plentiful and varied. At 6pm every night, two paper bags are placed on the balcony. One contains hot food for dinner; the other contains cold food for breakfast and lunch the following day.

Our hot dinners have included lamb korma, butter chicken, poached salmon, chicken parmigiana, barramundi and prawn laksa. Oh, and there is dessert every night too.

Standard breakfast items have been fruit juice, yoghurt, fresh fruit, muesli. We've also had a 'healthy breakfast pack' with kale, tomatoes and mushrooms, Danish pastries and muffins, zucchini frittata, and a breakfast roll stuffed with scrambled egg and spinach. Yesterday we had chia porridge with berries.

Lunch is my favourite meal. Duck noodle salad, ploughman's lunch, tuna salad, chicken and shitake salad ... Meals come with a bread roll, butter and cheese, just in case one has space for more food.

I have two complaints: (a) despite the cardboard packaging and bamboo cutlery, there is still single-use plastic that has to be discarded and (b) I can't possibly eat everything, so I am compelled to throw away quite a lot of food. I hate food waste. Well, what's the alternative, that I eat it all and roll out of here?

I was very pleased when the noisy bikini-clad duo left. Things have been more peaceful in their absence. Here's a tale of two neighbours.

• The woman in the cabin opposite lives in Darwin but had a knee replacement in Melbourne six weeks ago. She's thrilled with her new knee and decided to come home. But first, 14 days of quarantine ...

• A young man arrived a few days ago, wearing an orange wristband. He had worked the Mount Buller ski season in Victoria and was heading north for a holiday with friends. He had driven from Mount Buller (regional Victoria, green zone) to Melbourne Airport, but stopped along the way at a small town called Yea for petrol. What he didn't realise was that Yea had gone into lockdown a few days earlier. When he arrived in Darwin, his fuel stop in a red zone disqualified him from entering the NT. Back to Melbourne he went the next day!