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nonsense is revealed to be far more foreboding. This theme of the dual aspects of the
‘Otherworld’—in the traditions of the Hindu and ancient European goddesses who bring both
fertility and destruction, and of the Australian landscape which represents both paradise and
hell—is further dealt with in the chapters ‘The Divine Feminine’ and ‘Encountering the
“Otherworld”’.
5.6. Wally O’Sullivan, et al., Inhabitants of Wonderland
Several of the characters of The Year of Living Dangerously can be immediately
identified with characters of the Alice books. In Through the Looking-Glass, Alice goes into
the Garden of Live Flowers and meets Tiger Lily, a flower who shares a name with the elegant
but silent secretary in Hamilton’s ABS bureau. Hamilton’s Tiger Lily—whose real name is
Rosini, or ‘little rose’—fits the Orientalist stereotype of the Asian female which has survived
throughout Western literature, as the protagonist’s uncle’s beautiful but totally silent Japanese
wife in Louis Nowra’s Summer of the Aliens. Alice’s Tiger Lily, however, explains that
flowers are not really silent, and even criticises other flowers for talking too much:
‘Oh, Tiger-lily! said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving
gracefully about in the wind, ‘I wish you could talk!’
‘We can talk,’ said Tiger-lily, ‘when there’s anybody worth talking to.’
(Lewis Carroll, 138)
Hamilton’s Tiger Lily receives very careful descriptive preparation, but if one expects her to
do something overtly central to the plot, he is to be disappointed. She clearly does not think
Hamilton worth talking to, but this might simply be to protect her reputation. One is left
wondering about the possibility that she is responsible for the enigmatic message which
Hamilton receives, that ‘Your assistant Kumar is PKI’ (YLD, 36). If Tiger Lily is so
conservative as to avoid conversation with the Westerner who employs her, she would
necessarily also be anti-Communist. The only other candidate for suspicion is Kwan, and
while this would be somewhat illogical as he still has contacts with and admiration for the
communists, as a self-styled dalang he could certainly be playing the ‘wayang of the left’
against the ‘wayang of the right’. Koch has, however, made Tiger Lily beautiful and refined,
put her in a uniquely powerful position to know and communicate that Kumar is a Communist
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