Kowheori-19 │ Covid-19: When Ruby Princess passengers visited Te Papa

Te Papa history curator Stephanie Gibson interviewed four staff who worked on the day passengers from the Ruby Princess cruise ship visited Te Papa on 14 March 2020: Lucho Arca (Tours Coordinator) and Bruce Roberts, Lydia Ng and Sam Kells (Te Papa Hosts).

Lucho Arca

Lucho Arca noted that Te Papa’s tours are dominated by international visitors (around 90%), with a third coming from cruise ships: ‘a lot is at stake for Te Papa’. On the day Ruby Princess berthed, Saturday 14 March, passengers took excursions to local sites including Mt Victoria, the Cable Car, and Te Papa. Te Papa delivered tours to at least 332 passengers off the Ruby Princess. Others may have joined the daily hourly tours, which probably took the number to about 350.

At that time, Te Papa had been assured by Cruise Lines International Association that the industry had ‘robust health protocols’, pre-screening processes, clean ships and medical resources on board. Te Papa staff were conscious of Covid-19 but wanted to distract their visitors while on tour. ‘We never wanted to talk about the virus with our guests, so we said things like ‘don’t forget to wash your hands’ in a light-hearted way.’ Lucho ‘felt like the ship had it under control’, and that Covid-19 was an ‘external villain in the distance’. He remembers ‘having a great day’. But the reality set in a week later when flicking through Twitter and he saw the news about the Ruby Princess disembarking in Sydney with sick passengers. He quickly tried to get information, calling the shore excursion company who organise all cruise ship activities for Wellington. Concerned visitors started calling him. ‘Dread started to set in when you started to rethink every interaction in that past week’. 3000 people would have been in Te Papa on 14 March, including upwards of 350 Ruby Princess passengers on tours, plus passengers who simply walked in. There was no list of names - just numbers and tour times. It was ‘not lost on me how easily things could have fallen apart’.

It was hard to know whether to wait for the cruise ship companies and the New Zealand government to make the call. The ‘rational part in me wanted to cancel the bookings and close the museum’. Lucho wasn’t sure what external stakeholders were expecting of activity-providers like Te Papa. Te Papa’s leadership moved swiftly and closed the museum at 6pm Friday 20 March, and back of house was closed on Saturday and staff instructed to stay home. Front-of-house staff who were within one metre of a visitor for 15 minutes or more on Saturday 14 March had to self-isolate for 14 days and register with the Ministry of Health. ‘Self-isolation was challenging - what about flatmates?’ Lucho’s partner is immune-compromised, so he self-isolated, but his flatmate didn’t. As a young person he thought ‘I’ll be fine but others won’t be as fortunate’.

Lydia Ng

Tours didn’t start up again until early June. Lucho didn’t want any staff to ‘deliver tours if they were worried about contracting the virus when New Zealand reached alert level 1’, but most hosts ‘were itching to get back into it’. Te Papa Host Lydia Ng hosted tours on 14 March. She conducted two tours with 44 passengers from the Ruby Princess. They came from the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia, and most were older people. Tours are Lydia’s speciality but it wasn’t her normal day to come in. She remembers ‘it was so crowded that Saturday. The Ruby Princess pouring into Wellington city - pouring in for tours. We were almost back to back. It was so crowded, I had to talk very loudly. It was so noisy. I was worried about getting too close to people.’ Lydia asked two women on the tour ‘did they test you on the ship?’ They said ‘they take our temperature every day. Those that have cold or flu-like symptoms can’t leave the ship.’ I thought ‘I must not stand too close. I was aware of anyone coughing. All the time I was worried about coughing. I was a bit worried - why wasn’t the government closing the port?’

Lydia had a cold the next week. When she called Healthline on the following Tuesday they advised her to drink a lot of water and take Panadol. They said ‘don’t come in to get tested. Stay in, take your temperature’. So she began self-isolating and didn’t go out of her house for three weeks (‘I better play safe’). A friend had to buy her food. After a week, a Te Papa manager kept in touch almost every day. Lydia was on her own and very anxious (‘thank god the weather was great!’). After 10 days she had a headache and was very anxious. She rang Healthline at 5am but they didn’t want her to go to hospital as it could be dangerous for her. She kept taking her temperature and Panadol. Her friend and neighbour kept an eye on her. After three weeks, she started feeling better and gardened, painted the fence, and talked to her neighbour over the fence. In hindsight, Lydia feels she may have actually had Covid-19; a pharmacist friend diagnosed it. She experienced lethargy, headaches, body aches, and a dry cough. These are all potential symptoms of Covid-19.

Bruce Roberts

Te Papa Host Bruce Roberts conducted three tours for Ruby Princess passengers that Saturday. He thought on the day ‘supposedly everything is fine’. But Bruce's wife was immune-compromised. After the last tour he thought ‘I don’t feel safe. This is out there. Everyone comes here (to Te Papa)’. So he immediately went into self-isolation because of his wife. ‘I had already been doing grocery shopping. I had masks and gloves. But it was scary. If she had got it, she would have died.’

‘The sad part was finding out a week later that there was Covid aboard. Oh my god it could be all over the country from this one Petrie dish!’ Three weeks later Bruce received an email. One of the passengers had emailed Te Papa to say ‘I had a nice tour guide from Canada and I’ve tested positive. I wondered if he was ok.’ Bruce is actually from the United States, but the email was about him. So he called his GP and had a test that afternoon. He went to the Wainuiomata testing station and had to wait in his car in line for over an hour. ‘My decision to go into isolation was not just the cruise ships, it’s because we’re exposed to people from all over the world. We get the European flu season as well as the New Zealand flu season.’ Te Papa management was ‘incredibly supportive’. ‘We thoroughly loved lockdown, spending time with partners. We were both paid. We spent a couple of months together.’ Bruce didn’t come back to work until level 1.

Sam Kells

Te Papa Host Sam Kells remembers Saturday 14 March was a ‘very normal busy cruise ship day’. He conducted two big tours which were ‘physically and mentally exhausting’. ‘It was normal but there was a weird atmosphere being in the museum.’ He listened to Jacinda (Ardern) that day blocking off cruise ships. ‘It hit me in that moment - I might have been exposed’. A week later, he went into isolation. But during that week, he didn’t hear anything. Te Papa stopped tours after the Ruby Princess, but StoryPlace continued for two more days even though everything else had stopped in public programming. ‘Te Papa would have been a vector’.

A week later, Sam heard about the ship’s impact in Napier and the disembarking of sick passengers in Australia, and thought ‘I have to shield myself off from the world’. ‘I had to tell everyone I’d come in contact with - work and family. I could have been a ‘Typhoid Mary’ for that week.’ ‘I was honestly a bit freaked out. I live with my family. I might have exposed my whole family to the virus. I had to go into self-isolation in my own home - we had to physically separate the house’. Sam had his bedroom and part of the lounge. His parents got the rest of the house. His parents did all the cooking. Eating dinner was like ‘a scene from a horror gothic novel’ with his parents sitting at one end of a long table and Sam at the other end - ‘it was very, very weird’. But they formed a tradition of tuning into the daily 1pm Press briefing and usually watched Prime News every night. Sam took it very seriously - ‘I was genuinely worried'.

 

(The above image shows a Te Papa Host and visitors in Te Hono ki Hawaiki, 2013, and is indicative of the tours taken by cruise ship passengers at Te Papa. Photograph by Norm Heke. Te Papa, 3388).