I was immediately struck by how seriously the store's staff and customers were still taking the social distancing precautions.

Shoppers holding heavy, full-to-the-brim baskets were happy to pause their progress and wait for some of their fellow shoppers to vacate aisles.

Other customers would theatrically leap out of the way as someone approached and wave them past like a police officer controlling an intersection.

Despite the supermarket not being hugely busy, the queue for the checkout stretched back almost to the other end of the store as people took the 1.5m distancing regulation and doubled or even tripled it, just to be safe.

That shopping experience was in stark contrast to the one I had in a big Wagga supermarket yesterday.

If social distancing is not dead in Wagga, then it is certainly on life-support because there was precious little evidence of it going on from what I could see.

My first of many close encounters came almost immediately upon entering the supermarket, in the fruit and veg section, when I stopped to peruse the avocados.

Not wanting to be the person who in the middle of a pandemic picks up and squeezes all 150 avos in search of the perfect one, I was instead taking a bit of extra time to make a shortlist of two or three top candidates using only the power of my sight.

Finally I settled on one and picked it up, only for my light touch to damn near crush the hideously over-ripe fruit.

Hastily putting it back, I was scanning for candidate number two when a lady suddenly appeared out of nowhere at my side, hip-and-shouldered me out of the way and grabbed the avo I had just discarded.

Not only did the incident cause me to question whether in fact I had erred in so callously dismissing the super-soft avocado, but I immediately thought of the need to self-report to my partner, lest CCTV footage of this unplanned tryst ever leak onto the internet.

I witnessed many other close encounters during this shopping expedition and the majority of them were motivated out of kindness, rather than ambivalence or disobedience.

However, I am genuinely worried that the Wagga community is becoming complacent.

Sure, it has been months since our last confirmed case of coronavirus, but it only takes one infected person interacting with a community that has become a little careless for all that to change.

Please don't lower your guard.

All the best for the week ahead,

Ross Tyson, editor