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C. J. Koch turn attention to the ancient thought of Asia to further the Australian search for self
and soul, and to demonstrate the psychological hardships one must overcome just to rediscover
the essential, circular equilibrium of the spirit of the Vedas.
This chapter will focus on this fundamental concept as applied by Blanche d’Alpuget in
Turtle Beach and Christopher J. Koch in Across the Sea Wall. Though it is an essential
principle to the other novels, these two adequately introduce the problems of escaping the
linear and positivist Western attitudes which are laden with the clichés, stereotypes and
prejudices discussed in the two preceding chapters, and of moving toward an Eastern attitude
which acknowledges that in order to know himself and his universe man must come to terms
with the limits to his discernment. Accepting his ‘non-knowing’ will lead him to doubt, but it
is precisely that doubt which is necessary to engender faith. Only through faith can man seize
the reality that his present and natural—but by no means ultimate—state is one of non-
knowing.
6.2. First Steps to Self-discovery in C. J. Koch’s Across the Sea Wall
In his early novel Across the Sea Wall, Christopher J. Koch takes on the search for an
Australian self in Asia. His protagonist, Robert O’Brien, is a young Australian who runs away
from his pre-packaged future as a married civil servant towards what he expects to be a young
man’s adventure in Europe. He embarks on a rusty ship bound for Italy, where he encounters a
group of European emigrants, including the Latvian war refugee Ilsa Kalnins. O’Brien is
fascinated by the exotic allure of India which is part of his Orientalist cultural heritage, by the
‘impression of sophisticated knowledge of the world which he gets from his post-war
European travelling companions’, and especially by Ilsa, who seems to be the ‘keeper of the
key/secret’ of ‘hidden power, superior knowledge, access to the source of all riches’ (Sharrad,
1985, 64), and in whom he falls uncontrollably, passionately, helplessly in love.
Helen Tiffin notes how Ilsa, who is mostly recognised for her representation of the
Hindu goddess Kali, at first personifies Europe for O’Brien, making a further journey there
unnecessary. He fantasises over and is obsessed by ‘the vast experience of Europe embodied
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