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Yellow Skin, White Masks
It’s a look of adjustment. Coloured people have felt it since the ancient time, since the long, long ago when the sun stopped shining where white people come from and race was invented. It’s that fraction-of-a-second shift you see in somebody’s face, a twitch of their eyebrows and then a smile-in-recovery when your English is…
Understanding Depression: Be Kind to your Mind
“Malingerer” is my reflexive conviction when I talk about depression or hear it discussed. Mental illness is the privilege of wealthy societies where basic needs – food, water, security – are accessed by most. Do I have a right to complain, feel sad, want to die, in a world where people risk their lives to…
Tiger Traps
In the North of India, lost somewhere in the heart of Rajasthan, near a tiny town with a single dirt road, I went looking for tigers. In a national park as big as a small country, the way you look for tigers is simple: you drive and drive across prairies and through forests, around lakes…
Iranian Women Are Changing the Game
My third evening in the Islamic Republic of Iran lands me in an underground music gig in a hip café-cum-alcohol-free-bar in the capital, Tehran, where a special band is playing. The café swells with young tehranis, a small ocean of dark hair, streetwear and hijabs moving with excitement. Besides the bluish light illuminating the stage,…
I Ate Ice Cream at Bali’s Biggest Rubbish Dump
I notice the wildlife before the people. Between the hoards of holy cows and scavengers of the sky, there’s fierce competition for edible waste. I’m ankle deep in rubbish before I notice nimble fingers combing through the dump. This is Suwung, the largest official landfill site in Bali—a 44-hectare cleared plot of land. Once a…
Fucking My Oppressors
Here I am, on my knees for a white man. Throwback to 50 years ago, and the context of this statement would have meant I was about to be beheaded, or shot, or whatever else occurred during the Vietnam war. But it’s 2020, and as the world slowly comes to terms with the breadth of its…

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.