But through all the bad, many of Ballarat's multicultural and religious communities have managed to stay strong as one.

A new video, with messages of hope from a range of different faiths across Ballarat has been produced with words of encouragement and strength.

Chair of the Ballarat Interfaith Network, Margaret Lenan Ellis, said restrictions meant many cross-cultural events were simply not possible, but the network was determined to remain active.

VIEW THE VIDEO HERE

"We weren't able to meet as an interfaith committee until a few of us were able to get together back in June and we were were mulling around what relevance could we have in the community," Ms Lenan Ellis said.

"It was Craig from the Salvation Army who put the suggestions across to produce a video, we put it to some Zoom meetings and everyone thought it was a terrific idea.

"It was a terrific exercise to pool together people speaking from their different faiths."

Hindu Temple and Cultural Community vice-president Pradush Narayanan said it had been difficult to have to cancel events throughout the year.

"It's something that the whole world is facing, everyone has to deal with the same issue," he said.

"Our community is about meeting each other, sharing food, families play together, everyone is feeling more isolated.

"There's only so much time you can spend in front of the television or reading books, the person to person feeling."

Islamic Society of Ballarat secretary Darren James said the Ballarat mosque has been closed since the initial direction to do so in March and had not reopened.

"As we are an open community, mosques generally are open to everybody who travels," Mr James said.

"People who may want to call in can perform their daily prayers and so on.

"We took a cautious approach, we wanted to make sure the community here in Ballarat is not seeing any cases bought into our area."

Mr James said the Muslim community had missed getting together and social interaction.

"Those occasions have been sadly missed by the community," he said.

"We're very proud of the way the local Islamic families and community have obeyed the restrictions put in place by the department of health and police.

"Once regional Victoria takes that next step, we will be allowed to start to perform some indoor prayer with restrictions, hoping we're not far away, everyone is looking forward to that day."

Ms Lenan Ellis said there was a strong element of faith that the world would get to the other side of the pandemic.

"I know lots of churches are meeting via Zoom which is fantastic, but it is not the same as face-to-face," she said.

"Contact is very important, having a virtual reality is only part way to reality.

"Everyone understands the situation. They are prepared to see this is a passing thing and to adapt to it, to see the end in sight.

"One of the strengths of people with faith, whichever faith they belong to, they get their reassurance that God, or Allah, or whoever you look t,o has an overview of what is going in the world."