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noise came from a purple and green lizard some six inches long, clinging to the wall above his
bed’ (YLD, 173). He feels ‘unreasonable loathing’ for the creature, who as Bill the lizard is
sent down the chimney into the house where the hugely grown, claustrophobic Alice is
trapped:
She drew her foot as far down the chimney as she could, and waited till
she heard a little animal (she couldn’t guess of what sort it was) scratching and
scrambling about in the chimney close above her: then, saying to herself ‘This
is Bill’, she gave one sharp kick, and waited to see what would happen next.
(Lewis Carroll, 36)
Hamilton is as yet no more ready to act in less nonsensical ways than Alice, but having
met his Bill is important. Lewis Carroll’s Bill returns as an important juror in the capital trial
of the Mad Hatter, who stands accused of stealing the Queen of Heart’s tarts. Koch’s green
lizard melts into an image of the lush and fertile Javanese countryside—metaphor of ferment,
mystery and power—and, as will be discussed in the section on Koch’s Two Enigmatic Alices,
into the personality of Billy Kwan. The two are interrelated, as is made clear in Hamilton’s
dream which foreshadows his second journey into the highlands of Java, when he will come
face to face with Asian forces of destruction and creation:
The road they had driven on to get here this morning unwound in his mind like
a film, and the film kept winding back to one persistent image: the Javanese
mothers nursing their babies at the doorways of the roadside kampongs, and
then blending together to become one mother with one baby. Green-framed by
the palm-grove’s liquid green, she smiled in great friendliness—her gleaming,
oiled hair in its traditional bun secured by right combs, her bared, yellowbrown
breast resembling one of the fruits piled in baskets by the road: as
though human and vegetable flesh were nurtured alike by the hill-country’s
deep red soil and myriad streams. In shallow dreams such as these, we are still
half-consciously thinking; and Hamilton said: But that’s the picture in Billy
Kwan’s room.
He did not know why he said this. The pleasant Javanese matron did not
really resemble that wildly dancing figure with snake-like hair in Billy’s
picture of the Hindu goddess; and yet seemed to him in his dream that her hair
had now come lose from its combs, and fell in snake-like coils and switches on
her shoulders: that she had become someone else. (YLD, 173)
This leitmotif of the duality of creation/destruction in the image of Asia is often found
in Australian literature. The rabbit hole, through its entry into the ‘Otherworld’, offers the
promise of enlightenment, yet poses certain threats to those who dare venture in. For Lewis
Carroll’s Alice the danger is treated childishly nonsensical; for Koch’s protagonists the
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