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epeatedly struck me as almost perfectly explaining many of the difficult allusions in Koch’s
novels. I later learned that Zimmer is held , in the words of Prof. Dr. Michael Hahn, Professor
of Indology at the Philipps-Universität in Marburg, Germany, to play the role of ‘an inspired
outsider’ in the field of Indian Studies, but this did not mitigate the relevance I had in the
meantime found in the essay ‘Crossing the Gap’, in which Koch acknowledges his debt to
Zimmer’s work when he made his own investigations into Hinduism beginning in the 1950s.
Indeed, an ‘outsider’ seems just the authority required for a study concentrating on the
Australian ‘Other’. It has not always been so easy to find the sources to Koch’s and
d’Alpuget’s knowledge of Asian philosophies, and in the cases when it has been possible it has
not always proved useful, but the path towards their Eastern archetypes was opened.
1.2. The Title
Any student of post-colonial literature will recognise the terms ‘self’ and ‘Other’ as key
concepts in the theoretical discussion about the (re)formation of national identities in the wake
of the collapse of the European—and especially the British—imperial regimes. There is a
certain ambiguity in the terms which is faced by any society when it goes quietly one day from
being colonial to post-colonial. It is a problem which a nice little revolution resolves quite
well, but when the colonial master grants post-colonial status mustn’t there remain some
indebtedness which precludes the growth of a separate identity? The intention of this study,
however, is not to explain and discuss current post-colonial theory but to focus on the specific
and rather unique relevance of these terms within the context of the Australian-Asian
relationship. The white settler society, once a dominated role-player of the empire, has in the
post-colonial period become the dominant social group in contemporary Australia. Yet, the
post-colonialist label it shares with its Asia-Pacific neighbours has not led to a dismantling of
the reciprocal racial predjudices or allowed development of a sense of Australian identity tied
to the region in which it has its most important economic and political interests. Indeed, when
white Australians venture into the Asia-Pacific, they resemble the old European colonials just
as much as—or more than—they ever did—to themselves as well as to the Asians.
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