At 11am on Thursday, August 12, 2021, Canberrans learnt they would enter a seven-day lockdown at 5pm after a young Gungahlin man had tested positive for coronavirus.

When Chief Minister Andrew Barr addressed the territory early that afternoon, in what was the first of a run of daily press conferences, he spoke gravely.

"This is the most serious public health risk we have faced in the territory this year, and really since the beginning of the pandemic," Mr Barr said.

By the end of the day - after people rushed home from work, stocked up from supermarkets and got their first strange taste of having COVID in the community in more than a year - the city fell into an eerie calm.

The seven-day lockdown turned into 64 long days as COVID-19 lingered in the community.

The lockdown bought time for a large-scale vaccination effort to protect the city so restrictions could be relaxed.

Canberra re-emerged after that spring as a changed city.

Here are four stories of how Canberrans in some of the hardest-hit areas learnt the news, and how they reacted.

Barton Grocer owner Domenic Costanzo was resting at home after hurting his back when the snap-lockdown was announced. He received a call from a staff member: "we are getting punished".

Despite his sore back, Mr Costanzo came to work.

The store was absolutely packed with people buying last-minute necessities to get them through another lockdown period.

"It was a struggle, but we did three days turnover in one day," he said.

"And then there was nothing."

Online deliveries took off as major supermarkets became inundated with orders and couldn't keep up with demand.

"We did home deliveries, online ordering, we cut back staff hours and everyone shared what we could," Mr Costanzo said.

"Everyone understood, everyone knew what was going on, we were all in the same boat."

However, the overall number of customers plummeted.

"It was terrible," Mr Costanzo said.

Now, the bustling business - which features a grocer, cafe, florist, bottle shop and even offers catering - is almost back to pre-COVID numbers.

The Barton Grocer opened in 2016 and Mr Costanzo and his family literally built the venue from the ground up.

The family-owned business has even expanded with a barbershop and a dry cleaning service next door. The new venture opened only last week.

"We've still got our main rushes during the day, but we're missing that extra. When it's quiet people coming in dribs and drabs, we don't have that anymore," Mr Costanzo said.

"That's a combination of a lot of people working from home now, which back a couple of years ago you could predict these days, whereas now we don't know, even a pay day is not as busy as any other day.

"Now things are picking up so we'll see how we go."

LOOK BACK:

There was a sense of inevitability in the weeks before the lockdown so schools were making plans for a switch to remote learning.

It quickly emerged that there were clusters of cases at some of the largest public schools in Canberra: Lyneham High School, Gold Creek School and Harrison School.

Education Directorate executive group manager for school improvement Mark Huxley was involved in the effort to get critical information out to families and standing up pop-up testing centres.

"Probably the one I'll never forget is the image of the Gold Creek testing centre where we had all the community showing up to be tested there and we actually put Bluey up on the big screen, just because we knew that the kids were feeling a bit uncertain and probably a little bit scared," he said.

ACT schools had already had the experience of remote learning in 2020 so schools were much more prepared the second time around.

However, parents had to juggle supervising remote learning with their own work and home duties.

"Obviously it put a lot of pressure on different people in our community and not everyone is as well equipped to respond to that," Mr Huxley said.

"But I think everyone was accepting that we were doing everything possible within the available options we had to support everyone as best we could."

Association of Parents and Friends of ACT Schools executive officer Jenni Rickard said the lockdown made families slow down their busy schedules and question what they valued.

"There were some kids that were playing every single sport that you could imagine and coming back to it, families really understand now what they value and they want more time together. [They are] not necessarily doing the swimming lessons and the dance lessons and in the car as they drive to all these activities," Mrs Rickard said.

"So I do think families have pared back what they were doing and really sticking to the things that they value as a family and I think that's only beneficial for families."

She said school and university students missed some important rites of passage that they won't be able to get back.

"I worry what it means for those kids who did miss out."

LOCKDOWN HOTLINE:

In the weeks leading up to August 12 there was a great sense of foreboding for Canberra's health authorities.

"We were all expecting it. We had probably anticipated seeing it a little bit earlier," chief health officer Kerryn Coleman said.

"We were leaning forward so far that we almost felt that we were going to fall over. It was kind of like being at the start of a race and you're sitting there waiting for the gun to go off."

Before the trigger was pulled, authorities had been hard at work planning how the territory would respond to COVID-19.

As COVID-19 spread across NSW, ACT Health had implemented travel restrictions with places where there had been transmission of the virus. Those who wished to travel to the ACT from one of these areas needed an exemption to do so.

The trigger for ACT Health was finally pulled on the evening of August 11. Several COVID fragments had been found in Canberra's wastewater and it was clear there was transmission in the community.

The first case was confirmed early on the morning of August 12 and it was imperative that contact tracing began immediately.

ACT Health's Rebecca Hundy was the director of case investigation and contact tracing at the time. She said all hands were on deck for the interview with the first case.

"We had lots of people sort of around listening in because we needed to act, we knew we needed to act quickly, and be really thorough with the interview," she said.

With the trigger pulled for the lockdown, Dr Coleman said at that point the aim was to suppress the virus until there was adequate vaccination coverage in the community.

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For King O'Malley's managing director Peter Barclay the day felt like deja vu.

"It was really disappointing to think we had to go back down that track," he said.

The first lockdown in 2020 occurred a few days after St Patrick's Day celebrations, after that Mr Barclay wasn't sure if the pub would open again.

"Fortunately, we did reopen and we put masks on and went with all the rules that came in place and kept functioning," he said.

"When we reopened again it was like, 'We've conquered this, now we're in a really good space to reopen'.

The yearly highlight for Mr Barclay is the Canberra's Best Beard competition held every August.

"We were all excited for our beard competition, the publicity had gone out, we're handing out cards saying, 'This is our next big event, come along for a great day'. And then the snap lockdown happened," he said.

"Everything went into the shredder.

"Here we go again."

Now one year on, the pub is gearing up to once again crown the capital's top whiskers on August 28.

"We're happy to be open and trading and really appreciate every day that we've got the freedom," Mr Barclay said.

"People are really excited, a lot of our staff are travelling, they're going to see all sorts of things and enjoying life in a positive way."

Tell your story in the comments. What were you doing when you heard the news? How did you react? How has your life changed since then?