In the open, we perspire from every surface and into every skinfold. Sweat runs from under my sports bra into the ridges of my soft stomach, it drips from my top lip into the corners of my mouth. My hair is damp. My arms are moist and sticky, flecked with sand and dirt. We’ve been walking for an hour, and since the woodsy section finished, it’s been open-air, low-lying grass and direct sun. In the distance, there is the crashing sound of the ocean, a kind of compass. We walk on, breathing, sweating, panting, sneezing, coughing, wiping our noses, scratching our faces, pulling our caps from our itchy heads and fanning ourselves. There is no protection from the environment. It is wide, it is vast, it is heat and glare and burn.

I want to hurry along, try and get to the next covered thicket more quickly, but my legs have other ideas; they’re heavy and floppy, and if I pump them any harder, breathing becomes difficult. Dan and Rhett and Eleni aren’t doing too badly. I’mdawdling in the rear, and I get the impression they’re savingenergy, rather than flailing like me.

We reach a wider path, stretching left and right. The track to Bittangabee still runs straight ahead, and I can see tree cover a few hundred metres away. A sign reads To Pulpit Rock, camping and fire prohibited, pointing right towards the cliffs.

‘Let’s check out the rock,’ Dan says.

‘Really?’ I’m groaning and I know it’s annoying, but the days of drinking and lack of sleep and heat have started to accumulate in a burst of I don’t give a fuck about this trek anymore. I sit down, like a toddler having a tantrum.

‘You right?’ Rhett squints at me.

Dan smirks. ‘We’ve only just started. Toughen up.’

Eleni doubles back to me. ‘Drink some more water. It helps with the fatigue, with your muscles. You’ll feel more energetic.’

‘Okay, doctor.’ I take a long swig from my water bottle. Eleni rummages in her pack and pulls out a plastic tube.

‘Suck on this,’ she says, holding it out to me.

‘You suck on it,’ I say, and we both laugh.

‘It’s glucose. Usually marathon runners use them, but you look dehydrated.’

‘You do look a bit ratshit,’ Rhett says.

‘Friends like these.’ I take the tube and suck it down. It’s artificially sweet and citrusy, reminding me of the orange concentrate McDonald’s sells, pretending it resembles juice.

‘Better?’ Eleni takes the plastic from me and tucks it back into her pack.

I stand up. ‘I do feel better. Thanks, doc.’

She hangs back with me, and we swerve right, heading to the ocean. It’s gustier in this direction, flinging heat and sand at us. But soon there are hardy trees, giving some shade and protection, and any reprieve from the direct sun feels almost as good as lowering yourself into a cold pool of water, or stepping out of a heated cabin into the snow. We reach a fork, and a sign says Keep left, so we do. The trees thicken overhead.

The smell of salt intensifies, and the ocean claps loudly. We come upon a set of wooden stairs, framed by banksias and tea-trees, that lead to an expanse of rippling white stone and then to a black rock shelf reaching over the sea, with a rocky ledge proud and high on its left. The ledge is almost pretty; it’s as though it has been sliced cleanly through its midsection, exposing panels of grey, black and orange, resembling a frame of stained glass. We clump down the stairs and pause on the white rock.

‘We can walk all the way to the edge,’ Dan says, pointing to the black platform.

The water slams against the black rock, spray fanning into the air. Dan jogs straight down to the precipice, while Eleni and I take a more cautious route, standing under a huddle of trees. Rhett stays on the white rock, canvassing the view. I breathe deeply. Salt air is the cleanest smelling air.

Eleni points to the left. ‘Look at the red cliffs.’

Beyond the ledge, we can see cliffs and bays, with orange and ochre-coloured rock standing above the rich blue water. In the bright sun, some of the rock deepens to a vermillion, a colour uncomfortably close to the deadly skies seen in the worst of the fire-affected towns. I take a selection of photographs: my favourite is an image taken above the ocean, showing a stretch of the burgundy rock cutting across the blue water. Part of me still wants to float away in it, but these aren’t the gentle, protected waves of Eden’s bays; this is the lawless open ocean.

Dan calls for us to come down to the platform, so we retrace our steps and head down with Rhett. We stand on the sheerrock, wind thumping us and spray blowing onto our armsand legs.

‘Be fun to take a tinny down there,’ Dan says.

‘Into that?’ Rhett asks, dubious.

‘It’d be some alpha shit.’

We stand and absorb the water, the cliffs, the trees, the rocks. It feels like an entirely separate world here: no people, no cars, just the rush of the waves meeting the rocks endlessly, infinitely. I wonder if this is how astronauts feel, or anyone who enters a space wholly unlike their home; people who live and work in Antarctic science facilities, or on offshore rigs or ships in the middle of the ocean, like my mother does. Do they stop feeling human, after a while? Do they revert to their most animal selves, without the comforts of television, internet, music, the firmness of earth under their feet, the steadiness of dirt, concrete and bitumen? Perhaps, in these foreign, unusual circumstances, you can become something entirely new, like thecaterpillar does: melting itself into something to be reconstitutedentirely, bursting out of its chrysalis with newfound wings.

For all the months I spent in lockdown, I was the sole presence in my unit; everything surrounding me existed for my comfort, my needs. Out here, we are together in a group, but the isolation is more powerful than anything I experienced during Airlock. Out here, everything I’m looking at, treading on, gripping hold of, has lived longer than me, better than me, and has no need for me at all.