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Walking Away Towards You
When I think of Spain I think of a dog, handsome but dusty, sleeping in the shade of a tangled olive tree, while the sun beats down all around and the cicadas screech. Repeat that scene a hundred thousand times and you will have a passable impression of España. Of course, there are variations. The…
The Death of a Doorman
My previous portero died unexpectedly. One day he was there – a fat and jovial man, bald, glasses, head pushed a little forward giving way to the staircase of rolls in the back of his neck, always with a kind word, or the latest English phrase he’d taught himself, Goot eebening, or just to hold…
Travel: On Separation and Connection
A river mirrors the sky and a strip of life sits in between the middle of the blues I was reminded that my internal world was never really private because my external life has always reflected it back to me and I’ve been in the middle the whole time. Before I step out of the plane, mimicking its mechanics, and kick into my own auto-pilot function.…
El Abuelo’s Ashes
Buenaventura Bravo’s main job during the Spanish Civil War was getting his goats out of the village and into the mountains. This was no top-secret mission, entrusted upon young ’Ventura by the besieged Republican government in Madrid, just something that had to be done; this was the day-to-day life that continued to unfold regardless of…
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…
A Universal Language
Stickiness glues every inch of my clothes to me. Blaring sun blinds me from all directions. Wine fumes leave no room for fresh air on this street. A bead of sweat slides down my face to land on my upper lip. It tastes slightly of stale wine. I turn a corner and can finally see…
I Travelled Spain With 29 Women
A love letter to my she-wolfpack This is an ode to the 29 women whom I just travelled with. 29 babes. The 29 femme fantasies, 19-to-29-year-old horny, but mostly hungry college co-eds; two-and-a-half dozen unapproachable beauties, the kinds that slack jaws when they walk in bars, make men gape agaw and bend over backwards…
The Astray Guide to Travelling Spain
Where: Modern Spain is best defined as occupying most of the land that was conquered by, and then reclaimed from, the Moors, minus the kingdom to the west that wasn’t unified under the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon to Isabella of Castille. You know, everything south of Andorra but north of Africa that uses the…
The Astray Guide to Not Looking Like a Tourist in Spain
Did you know that Spaniards have their own term of disendearment for us? Well they do, it’s guiri (pronounced giddy), and it basically means sunburnt foreigner who puts chorizo in all their dishes, but is also levelled at us whenever we commit a faux pas while travelling in the kingdom. Your Spanish friends/girlfriend/in-laws will place hand…

Astray is 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.