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A 102-year-old warning from the NSW government as it tried to contain the Spanish flu pandemic has resurfaced as the state is locked in a desperate battle with coronavirus - and it makes for very familiar reading for Sydneysiders caught in lockdown.
The Spanish flu ravaged Australia in 1919, leaving 15,000 Aussies dead within a year of the first case arising in January, and killing 50 to 100million people worldwide.
Australia's population stood at about five million at the time, and more than a third of all Australians were infected.
Indigenous communities were hit particularly hard by the virus, which had a 50 per cent mortality rate among Aboriginal people.
The NSW Government of today finds itself in similarly dire straits with Sydney in the grip of the Indian Delta variant, an incredibly contagious strain of the coronavirus.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian has responded with a sweeping range of restrictions and warnings that failure to follow them will spell disaster - which is exactly what the 1919 government's flyer states.
The document begins by warning the people of NSW their state is faced with a 'greater danger than war' and shouts 'EVERYONE SHALL WEAR A MASK'.
The document was released by the NSW Government on February 3, 1919 - and its calls for residents to obey measures to control a killer virus still ring eerily true today
