Photosensitivity is a rare condition that, if you haven't heard of it, sounds like something out of science fiction.
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The sensation of sunshine causes the skin to break out in a blistering rash. Once any hint of ultraviolet radiation is gone, the rash fades within several hours. But while it is present, exposed skin becomes red and bumpy, itchy, and painful.
The disease is little studied or understood, and while there are ways of managing the condition and lessening the symptoms - there is no cure.
Sufferers are essentially allergic to the sun.
Photosensitivity is an intriguing medical anomaly - but for Launceston's Eliana Robinson, it is her everyday life.
She jokes that one day, she will be able to write a great vampire novel.
"People could write me off as being a complete vampire fanatic," she said.
"Because I have to live in darkness. And I burn in sunlight.
"It's a bit of a romantic take on the condition - and it's great research for if I write paranormal romances. Like, I've really got the lifestyle down pat."
For many years, Ms Robinson was forced to cover herself up completely - wrapped from head to toe in protective fabric.
After long-term desensitising treatments that teach the skin not to see sunlight as an enemy, she no longer has to hide her face when she goes outside - even though the light still causes her to feel fatigued and uncomfortable.
Doctors have told her she won't ever be able to lose the thick, dark glasses that reduce the pain in her eyes. She is also still extraordinarily sensitive to temperature: fluctuating wildly between uncontrollable cold shivering and a feeling of burning up.
Short of a miraculous advance in scientific understanding, she will never be completely - as she puts it - normal.
So bearing her daunting inventory of health problems in mind, what she is in the middle of doing may seem like madness.
Ms Robinson is undertaking a two-week solo walk from Launceston to Hobart, raising money for trauma support service Enterprising Aardvark.
She knows the risks. But Ms Robinson has something to prove.
"I was at home, watching the Project, and there have been all these stories about people doing something like this - walking across the country or across a state for their causes," she said.
"And I thought, maybe I could do something like that.
"Walking is something I can still actually do. I wanted to look at what I still could do, instead of constantly being told what I can't do - even within my own mind.
"I really wanted to do something that would encourage me to get off the couch, with some sense of purpose.
"I figured, I might feel better about myself after this walk, and I also might be able to make other people's lives better as well."
Ms Robinson developed photosensitivity through a series of interweaving health issues that she calls "a best friends club filled with the worst people you could ever be friends with".
She has dipped in and out of ill health since birth, due to an autoimmune disease that weakens her organs and creates a litany of other symptoms. It causes her to fall ill remarkably easily: most recently, with a double-lung infection.
It was the autoimmune disease that made her susceptible to the water-borne illness that she came down with when she was 17, while swimming in Queensland. And it was a reaction to medication she was taking for that illness that caused her photosensitivity.
Her life so far has been a series of complex, interrelated conditions that make the simplest of activities exceedingly difficult. And now, she plans to spend a minimum of two weeks outside, in the elements, undertaking strenuous exercise, alone.
But Ms Robinson said she would rather put up with the pain than spend another minute inside in the dark.
"I've got things I want to do," she said.
"And that's why this walk is so important to me, because it's going to take a lot of personal strength and personal endurance to get past the fact that it's going to hurt like heck."
IN OTHER NEWS:
Throughout her 29 years struggling with her health, Ms Robinson has found refuge in pop culture.
She loves the Cressida Cowell series How To Train Your Dragon.
"People make fun of me for loving dragons as an adult, but the woman who wrote the books is like 50," she said, with a smirk.
She writes fan faction online, and designs furniture based on her favourite sets in films.
In a blog, she records her thoughts about the epic stories and worlds she devours - the fantasy quests where outsiders prove their worth.
"[It's] a reminder of fun, colour and courage," she wrote, about How To Train Your Dragon. "Possibilities and acceptance, inspiration and familiarity."
"I'm still looking for my New Berk," she wrote once in a period of homelessness, referring to the dragon-friendly utopia in the third How to Train Your Dragon movie.
Homelessness and poverty have been side-effects of Ms Robinson's illness. She has struggled to find an employer that would hire someone so unusual-looking, and has spent her adult life scraping by on Centrelink payments. She wants a job, but has found workplaces are reluctant to take on someone with ongoing health issues.
It's a state of affairs that is cruel, but not unusual.
The unemployment rate for people with a disability in Australia is double the general rate - only a quarter of people with a profound disability are employed. Forty-five per cent of those with a disability in Australia are living either near or below the poverty line. That's more than double the OECD average, and out of the 27 OECD countries, Australia ranks at the very bottom for the relative income of people with a disability.
Here's the Australian Human Rights Commission: "People with disabilities are more likely to experience poverty, live in poor quality or insecure housing and have low levels of education. They are often socially isolated, with fewer opportunities to take part in community life."
If I can do this, then clearly I can stack boxes.
- Eliana Robinson
That's been the case for Ms Robinson for her whole life, and she's sick of it.
Walking from Launceston to Hobart in spite of her personal barriers seems completely crazy - but the long-distance walk is her own epic quest.
It's her own hero's journey: an opportunity to prove her worth, like the characters in the stories she loves.
"Poverty and disability both have these very tight chains around me, and I want to break the both of them," she said.
"I know that financially, this walk isn't going to change anything. But I'm hoping to actually use it as a bit of accreditation, like in my CV - to show employers that are disinclined to believe that I can do anything because of my disability.
"If I can do this, then clearly I can stack boxes. You know?"
There is a line in the song Speechless that she was listening to when she decided to attempt the walk: that talks about how you can't choose when or how you'll die, but you can choose how you'll live your life up to that point.
"I can go days just locked in a room, like Rapunzel, going out of my mind," she said.
"Then comes night time, when I can go out and feel normal.
"But everything's closed and everyone's in bed. There's this isolation.
"And you start to think, I'm never going to do anything, I'm never going to be anything. And it starts to eat at you - like my illness. I start to feel like I just have to sit around and wait to die. But eventually I thought, nope. I don't want to do that."
So she's setting out for Hobart.
- Donate to Eliana's walk through GoFundMe, at gf.me/u/trnzpi