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Italy Story
I Lived and Worked in an Italian Monastery
I am not a religious person. I consider the existence of god with an agnostic shrug and struggle to understand the conservatism of my church-going acquaintances. Yet on a warm evening in late June, I stood in the mountainous Le Marche region of Italy, knocking on a Benedictine Monastery door. “Are you sure they know…
9 minRead time
Story
Alienation
It’s strange. You arrive to a new land, there are people to greet you. At first you don’t understand; in fact, you don’t understand for quite a while. But speaking your mother tongue never did you any good anyway. Communication was always hard for you. They say things with their hidden contexts and words you…
8 minRead time
Story
One of the Girls
It’s quiet outside, a little too quiet. There are meant to be 17 other people here but I haven’t seen any signs of life. Tired, culture-shocked, and utterly starving, I get my first ever meal in Canggu delivered to my villa’s door: a veggie burger with chips, an order akin to that of a seven-year-old…
7 minRead time
Feature
Horse Trekking a Country Under a Trump Travel Ban
You might remember in the month after Donald Trump was inaugurated back in January 2017 the thousands of protesters who turned out at airports across America to protest Trumps so-called “travel ban” -- more commonly (and rightly) known as the Muslim Ban. This original ban barred entry to citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iraq, Syria,…
9 minRead time
Story
The Pessimist in the Pool
A screech of, “GET ME IN THAT FUCKEN POOL!” rattles the oven air. Through the haze of red wine fumes baking off my body and the pain of sticky thongs rubbing on sweating, fluid-filled feet, I see the heavenly azure expanse that is the pool and quicken my hobble towards it. My friend Ebony and…
8 minRead time
Story UK
Sushi, Sex and the Boy Who Broke My Heart
“You’d be more attractive if you smoked and were less of a feminist,” he slurs, sloppily, arm slung like a dead weight over my shoulder as I walk him home after yet another drunken escapade. These words were not those of a nemesis nay, not even an acquaintance.  No, instead these words came from someone…
17 minRead time
Story
What It’s Like to Travel With Chronic Fatigue
“Fuck it," I said as I clicked book. The decision was final. I was going on an adventure.  When travelling, especially as a young person, there’s an unspoken expectation that you have boundless energy, so being constantly drained doesn’t fit the bill. As a 17-year-old in my final year of school, I contracted glandular fever,…
8 minRead time
Story
Looking For Reasons Why
“So you attracted your own attacker by manifestin’ him through your nightmares…” The round, well-meaning woman sits nodding to herself comfortably in her chair. White walls enclose on me, and whilst she makes every effort to soften the room with personal photos and her Chihuahua sitting quietly at her feet, neither the carefully chosen tone…
10 minRead time

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.