It seems that every week now the government is further easing the remaining COVID restrictions and on Wednesday Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced another raft of changes that will allow for bigger mass gatherings both indoors and out (even if they did come to late to save our Party In The Park this year).

At the same time it is becoming easier all the time to travel freely between Australian states as more and more borders come down.

More than three weeks without a community transmission of coronavirus in NSW and more than a month with no new cases in Victoria has created a real sense of optimism that elimination of the disease may not be beyond Australia's grasp.

And that must open the prospect of a return to international travel with quarantine-free trips to New Zealand the most likely starting point.

It will still take many years for us to fully recover from the devastation of coronavirus, particularly in terms of the national economy, but we are taking it small and invaluable steps towards a COVID-free future all the time.

Here in Bathurst there is a real sense of optimism that the worst of this pandemic is hopefully now behind us.

The Challenge Bathurst event on Mount Panorama last weekend was the biggest motorsport event held since the start of the pandemic and the city has been a hive of activity for the past three or four days.

Saturday morning in the shopping centre was as busy as it has been all year and shopkeepers are reporting very brisk sales.

Perhaps it is a product of people spending less on travel this year and having more to spend in local shops or perhaps it's simply the desire for so many to support the local businesses that will be a key to our emergence from the COVID recession.

Whatever the case, these are real causes for celebration as we head into the party time of the year.

We can't relax completely and there are still sensible measures we must continue to follow.

But we can genuinely hope now that we will end this year in a much better position that we started it and we can hope that things will only keep getting better as we head into 2021.