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Dating in the COVID Era
There is a kind of sexual urgency in the air since human touch became a scarcity. The prospect of a complete lockdown will see single people cooped up with nothing but Netflix and toys purchased from the kind of store you wouldn’t window shop with your grandparents. I can feel it. A glance at the…
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…
Sushi, Sex and the Boy Who Broke My Heart
“You’d be more attractive if you smoked and were less of a feminist,” he slurs, sloppily, arm slung like a dead weight over my shoulder as I walk him home after yet another drunken escapade. These words were not those of a nemesis nay, not even an acquaintance.  No, instead these words came from someone…
A Bit of Bad Fortune in Tokyo
During my stay in Japan, I observed a lot of fortune-telling in Tokyo. I write “observed” because I found it difficult to get my own fortune told given that my Japanese extends no further than, “bīru, kudasai” – one beer, please. I write “difficult” because it is a nice way of saying that I was…
Reluctantly Dancing on Space Cakes
"The game is called Presidents," one of the French girls is saying, gesturing excitedly the way people explaining card games do, her words coming to me through a haze of smoke. "And the aim of the game is..." But I can't catch what she's saying. Right now, I'm the dumbest, slowest version of myself, my…
The Indo-Japan Driver Exchange
Prologue Two lanky gentlemen are standing in a visa application line at the Japanese consulate in Delhi. Mr Sajjan: “Mr. Sharma, remind me again why we're exporting Indian drivers, of all things? Mr Sharma: Sajjan Ji, it's just another ploy by the opposition to trick the ruling government into embarrassing themselves. A conspiracy, I tell…

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.