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Yarns
Travelling With My Dead Grandmother
I’ve never been very good at following traditions. I don’t have any annual family meetups, Saturdays are almost never for the boys and I can’t even dedicate myself solely to one coffee shop. So when I travel and I see all these people buying a pin in every country they go to, or religiously tracking…
April 16, 2018
Yarns
In the Hours After Ink
“You know this is painful spot, yes?” “Yeah man, all good” I reply, full of false bravado and anticipation. The understated industrial style studio is clean. My artist has just finished preparing the bench and the smell of antiseptic is still strong in the air. An arrangement of indoor plants and succulents sits on the…
April 4, 2018
Yarns
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.…
March 19, 2018
Yarns
We Survived the Tokyo Snowstorm
Our roommate, J, told me this was the coldest winter Tokyo had experienced in 48 years. He told this to Gemma, too. Information from Jonny is taken with a grain of rice, but there’s no denying that it has been exceptionally cold. Almost-50-year-storm cold? How would I know? J had the propensity of cornering us…
February 27, 2018
Yarns
Travelling When Broken: A Memoir
I am sobbing as surreptitiously as I can in a scungy Indonesian bathroom, clutching two strawberry daiquiris bigger than my head. My cleavage is blistering beneath someone else’s Bintang and outside, Rihanna is shrieking at some fleshy Western youths to “WOOOOORK!” as they jump frantically under orange strobes. I want to stab myself in the…
February 25, 2018
Yarns
Trust No Fart
The night air was thick and warm as the streets of Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City pulsated with energy. I slipped into a local supermarket to grab some last-minute snacks, something that had become a ritual when prepping for an overnight bus ride. The supermarket aisles were just as relentless as the motorbike filled streets.…
February 25, 2018
Yarns
Fishing For Crabs
I squeeze my dad's hand in excitement. "Look!" I exclaim. There’s a splash in the water where the ocean meets the sand. A crab scurries along. There are little crab holes all along this Fijian beach, where crustaceans hide from the eager three-year-olds trying to imprison them. With pail and spade in hand, we bundle…
February 7, 2018
Yarns
The Longest Journey Home
The lights have just come up and I’m high as a kite. The last DJ is putting records into boxes and the crowd is dispersing. I look at my friends around me. Their eyes are dinner plates. “Woah…” Mag says, who has spent the last hour convinced he is a pirate in a medieval era…
February 6, 2018

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.