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Checkpoint 300: The World’s Worst Commute
“Qahua, qahua, qahua!” shouts Amin Jebreen, whose coffee cart, bellowing steam in the frigid morning air, is doing a roaring trade despite the fact that it’s 2:30am. Amin’s stall is one of many selling bread, biscuits, cigarettes and falafel, all under the watchful gaze of guard towers that rise above the border wall separating the…
The Angry White Man in the Van
Another attack in a major city has left us needing to talk about the angry young man in the room, or better, in the hire van. In Toronto, on Monday, a young man drove a van through crowds of pedestrians, killing 10 and injuring 15 more. He wasn’t an Islamist, nor was he an adherent…
The Astray Guide to Being a Yoga Wanker
The Enlightened /ɪnˈlʌɪt(ə)nd/ (noun): A group of people who religiously practice yoga, and whose enlightenment through the practice turns inwards and into semi-delusion as to their “goodness”. Synonyms: Yoga wanker, the author * The Enlightened are a fun bunch. They’re the ones calling themselves "yogis" and talking loudly in the organics store about how much they…
Travelling With My Dead Grandmother
I’ve never been very good at following traditions. I don’t have any annual family meetups, Saturdays are almost never for the boys and I can’t even dedicate myself solely to one coffee shop. So when I travel and I see all these people buying a pin in every country they go to, or religiously tracking…
For You or Your Followers?
She’s young, pretty and bored. She fake tans and applies makeup. Cleans her room and makes her bed. She changes out of her brother’s old T-shirt she wears as pyjamas and into a new dress, clicking away at the iPhone screen. She slides back into the daggy tee, swipes through 284 photos, marks her favourites…
I Found Home Half a World Away
I am part Indonesian, part German; in other words, I am Eurasian. I grew up in Singapore, living there for most of my life. I walked the same streets every other day, met the same friends out by the park and ate the same food at hawker centres as cravings hit. I became familiar and…
On Realising You’re a Fuckwit
I realised recently that I had spent a large proportion of my young adult life as a fuckwit. Let me define a fuckwit: Someone who keeps a religious count of how many “chicks” they’ve pulled and uses this number to gain social status. Someone who refers to going out with their male friends exclusively as…
Baguettes and Bureaucracy
“Oh, pardon madame… pardon monsieur,” I repeated as I bumped through the crowd of people contemplating the camembert selection. I was anticipating accusatory glares. Adrenalin was pumping through my body. The threat of a sudden need for negotiation in a language I didn’t fully have a grasp on loomed over my heart, and my shopping…

Astray is a storytelling project centred on travel, place, culture and identity.

We’re run by a team of writers who mostly live, work and play in nipaluna / Hobart. With reverence, we acknowledge the Tasmanian Aboriginal people as the traditional and ongoing custodians of trouwunna / lutruwita / Tasmania: land that was stolen and never ceded. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.