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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…
Why I Only Lasted Five Days in Sri Lanka
“You are a woman. And you are from...” the first man said. “Norway,” I said to correct what I assumed to be his assumption of my origin. I had done this before, because most people do not grasp how an Indonesian-Norwegian traveller can be travelling. This was not this day and trip’s problem though. “Yes,…
Tracking the Exchange Rate of my Trust
Content warning: themes of sexual assault In the winter of New Delhi, the birds of prey drew imaginary circles below the smog; they wouldn’t be seeing blue for a long time. The buildings that surrounded my hotel were hungover, power lines strewn over their stocky bodies like streamers at the end of a party. The…
A Lonely Planet Surprise in India
My stay in Rajasthan’s Royal City of Udaipur was intended to be a Lonely Planet special: accommodation, eating and sightseeing all planned out by an expert travel writer. But, as is relatively common knowledge, Lonely Planet mostly tends to be a collection of drab instructions written by someone whose idea of a shoestring budget is…
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…
Don’t Be a (Big) Dick
It was any other Saturday night. I was at a gay bar, drinking too many vodka redbulls and losing my mind over Britney song after GaGa song, having a good time with my friends. I was wearing new clothes and I felt like I looked good, a confidence that helps in environments like gay bars.…

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.