I’m not a nervous flier … but it’s been a while since I wheeled my little silver suitcase into the domestic terminal and got those airport butterflies. Still a thrill to fly.

I seem to lose my ability to retain information at the airport. You know that habit where you arrive at departures and peer up at the digital screens full of flight numbers searching for your plane. You check your timing and boarding gate obsessively. Gate 24. 1645. Gate 24. Plenty of time. Will check again in five minutes.

I go through the luggage check and promptly stress about whether I’ve accidentally packed any problems in my carry on. I did once come home with a full (unopened) can of beer which I was sure I wouldn’t be able to take on board. Surprisingly, it was fine. The brew showed up in the security x-ray and I was waved through.

Yet now I’m overthinking whether I can carry a bottle of water. Along with my inability to retain numbers, I also lose the capacity to think rationally about volume. Is 600ml of water ok? What about 50ml of perfume. What about tweezers? Could they be considered a weapon?

Check-in still involves unloading your belongings into a 1980s blue plastic tidy tray and rolling it along a chunky conveyor belt. Backpacks and laptops and jewellery get loaded up for x-ray. Men are removing their belts all around me. Shoes come off. It’s a strangely intimate ceremony.

I move forward and stand like criminal in a contraption while I get sized up by a security guard. Feet wide, arms out. Why do I feel like I need to not look guilty. The tweezers! Neutral face.

Beep – my left forearm lights up. I immediately wonder if I’m carrying something that will put me in prison. Security asks me to step aside and offers to pat me down on the spot. A firm but friendly lady lifts my sleeve to reveal the offending watch. Relief.

She waves me through and I’m back among the same men re-belting. Like well-behaved lemmings we step onto the escalator up to the food court which is like entering an alternate airport universe.

$11.90 for an almond croissant? Don’t mind if I do. $8 coffee? Yes please. And no matter the time at the airport, someone is always having a beer. No rules! Plane time! I love it.

People are well dressed at the domestic terminal today – fancier than I remember. I think we got slack pre-pandemic and now that people are flying again, the coats are out.

I browse books, perfume, expensive clothes and buy nothing because it’s all just part of the airport cabaret. Two inflatable neck pillows for $39. A bargain, but no thank you sir, it’s time for me to board.

Queuing habits are curious aren’t they. Do you join a long line or sit and wait? Funny how first class, business class and cattle class hierarchy is so readily accepted. You’re rich, I’m not. We’re all gonna end up in the same place. Seatbelts on, click. Safety video, ignored.

Rolling along the tarmac and quickly picking up speed, I watch the wings wobble and suddenly, somehow we’re airborne. On take off and touch down I always think about death. Some kind of aerial existential reflex. If this is it – did I live life well? Did I do it right? I feel momentarily overwhelmed. Here I am having a whole life crisis while the lady next me is picking her in-flight entertainment. She seems happy.

I’m in the window seat. Just two little oval panes of plastic between me and the sky. 35,000 feet high. Totally illogical. How are we even up here? I love the view. Endless green swirls below. How quickly a mountain becomes a molehill.

I’m always struck by how organised our homes, roads and rivers look from the sky. Houses lined up like Monopoly streets. Fields and forests meet like a perfect puzzle. Feels like the world makes sense for a moment.

And then… turbulence. Bong! It’s a very specific plane sound isn’t it?

Captain asks everyone to remain seated. Seatbelt sign lights up. Funny how after all these years there’s still a no smoking sign illuminated in every row.

One guy is sleeping though it all (even above the humming plane noise I can hear him snoring).

We zoom through the aerial bumps and now the drinks trolley is lumbering down the aisle. I remember how excited I used to get about plane food as a kid. Tiny trays and square snacks plus OJ in a cup with a foil peel-away top. Luxury.

Pressure in my ears comes and goes. I feel sleepy. How phenomenal to be speeding through the sky in a metal tube full of strangers yet so relaxed I could nap.

50,000 passengers a day go through Brisbane’s domestic airport.

Take off, touch down.

What a ride.