2021 - Astray

The Unexpected Joy of Enforced Public Nudity

After a bad injury, when I booked my first ever sports massage, I was shocked at the level of intimacy. The experience was more intimate, in fact, than any romantic encounter I’d had up until that point in my life. I’m British, you see, and we Brits tend to be a bit uptight. It's actually…

ByLotte Brunde 7 minRead time

Australia Story

Unwired

It was a feeling of liberation, the same kind when you get home and unzip your pants and take off your bra. Except I wasn’t at home and running around half-naked. I was on a hill farm, decently clothed. It had rained overnight. The land was covered in a damp, piercing coldness, reeking of fresh…

ByStephanie Qiu 7 minRead time

Identity Thought

Colour of Hyphens

My daughter asked me if she is white. As her brother tried to answer the question, looking at his colouring pencils and bringing his own arm closer to hers, my mind drifted to my first Australian experience that made me ask the same question. I took my daughter to the child nurse who commented during…

BySherine Al Shallah 7 minRead time

Story

I Moved Countries For a Holiday Fling

I'd only ever seen my grandma cry once, back when I was 12 and my grandpa died. Yet eight years later, as I walked towards my departure gate, I looked back to see that I had brought tears to the eyes of one of the strongest women in my life. It was a very dramatic…

ByNikki Richardson 7 minRead time

Editorial

Hi! Just A Friendly Reminder That If You’re Under The Age Of 75, Scotty And Barnaby Don’t Actually Give A Shit About You, Or Your Future.

This is why. When Barnaby Joyce got up on his pixellated pulpit last week and started preaching about how social media is about to get its long-overdue day of reckoning, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by a steely bolt of rage. “My daughter is but one victim of malicious online lies: it’s time the…

ByMaya Skidmore 10 minRead time

France Open Letter Story

On Relationships as a Traveller – A Note to My Younger Self

It is September and you’re 19 years old. You’re sobbing in an airport terminal – because you’re not sure you want to leave anymore – and filling in a survey about the quality of the facilities – because you just can’t say no to people. You’ll get better at both with time, I promise. Cry…

ByLise Loris 7 minRead time

Australia Story

Uncle

I felt a surge of magnetism from the rock as soon as I pulled into the national park in my dust-encrusted van. I’d just taken her five hours off-roading on a wild corrugated adventure in search of the ‘painted desert’. Every nook, cranny and tin of chickpeas was now covered in a pale orange powder.…

ByAlex Ward 13 minRead time

Peru Story

Pooped in Peru: A Tale of Kindness

This is a story of community, kindness and sharting. I arrived around midday at a little surf town in the north of Peru called Lobitos: a place where the desert meets the sea. In the wintertime, it’s a buzzing oasis for surfers from around the world as they gather to ride the long barrelling…

ByTessa Berkeley 13 minRead time

Feature

How a Young Japanese Beatboxer Showed Me the Power of a Humble Hobby

“No beatbox, no life.” It’s a simple statement and I can’t help but laugh at the hyperbole, yet something about it rings poignant and true. The more I learn about Japan’s competitive beatbox scene, the more I realise the sense of purpose that a simple hobby can provide in a pandemic-stricken world where many…

ByChristine Chanty 9 minRead time

Story

Why I Had to Leave the Small Canadian Town I Grew Up In

When you leave the place you’ve called home since you were nine years old for a country where the people live upside-down on the other side of the world, a few things are guaranteed to happen. These occurrences ring especially true when you grow up in a rural small town in the center of Canada.…

ByJesse Ousdahl 8 minRead time

Story

Lost and Found at Home: Confessions of a Trapped Traveller

“Will you be okay on your own?” the driver asked me, pulling to a stop. “I’ll be fine, thank you.” I’ve been doing this for long enough. I yanked my backpack off the back of the buggy and wandered over to the little tent that was mine for the next five nights. I’d been solo traveling for months…

ByKelsi Taylor 7 minRead time

Story

From Where, If Not Here? A Tale of Displacement

This piece was inspired by the many conversations of my travels. The distant coastline falls beyond the view of the pier from the boundary of the hostel. Behind the partition, hands are burdened with wrinkled beer cans and tobacco ciggies littered with weed. The drunken party promises of new-age nomads from the distant kitchen sound…

ByNeelam Dajee 9 minRead time