The Andromeda Galaxy

Swati Raghunathan

Swati Raghunathan, an Indian from Mumbai, fell in love with Australia by accident — watching a leg-spin bowler so gifted he made cricket, a game she'd never cared for, irresistible, and the country behind him irresistible too. That fascination grew into adoration, and when the chance came to study for her doctorate at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, she took it not for the degree but for the life it promised — arriving with her closest friend, intending to stay forever. Hobart remade her into someone unmistakably Tasmanian. A student of literature with a master's degree, poetry was always her favourite form — and in Hobart, that love finally found its subject. Leaving, she says, was the hardest thing she has ever done. Mumbai brought culture shock and displacement. More than a decade later, she still misses the cold, the coffee, the only place that has ever felt like home. In her 40s, she began writing poems about Hobart, and doesn't intend to stop.