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With the end of the period of colonial domination Australia found its identity crippled
by the deconstruction of the old imperial order. Alongside the persistent remains of the older
points of view, Australia’s vision of itself—in economics, culture, politics, etc.—has changed
from being peripheral to world events to being ever more self-aware and assertive as a regional
power. Images of itself and the Asia-Pacific are now creations of its own making. Asia is
often presented as a sort of panacea for Australian problems and inadequacies, yet the
uncertainties of Asian intentions still leave Australia struggling to determine its rightful role
vis-à-vis Asia in the post-colonial world. Australians understand that they belong logically to
the Asia-Pacific, but still fear the region to be full of the racial and cultural hazards which have
always tormented the Australian-Asian relationship.
The direct study of Blanche d’Alpuget and C. J. Koch begins in Chapter 4, ‘The Cliché
as Writer’s Tool’, with a look at how the writers manipulate the deeply ingrained colonial
stereotypes which ought already to have been ‘deconstructed’. In Turtle Beach Blanche
d’Alpuget shows her mastery of the stereotype by introducing the sort of ‘horror story’ images
of Asia which every tourist loves to bring back from a 14-day package holiday. The extreme
cleanliness of Singapore, the filth of Malaysia, the duplicity of the Asians, and impossible
technological and social backwardness are clichés which lure her readers into identification
with the central characters. She then turns the clichés back on the readers by showing how
those Australian expatriates are living in neo-colonialist luxury, exposing the readers’ own
inherent if repressed feelings of racism and intolerance.
Koch’s Asia is a playground for his characters, who express aspects of their personalities
which they would have to hide in a West which deems them degenerate. Both d’Alpuget and
Koch are raising neo-orientalist ghosts, but are not apologists for the old Western-dominated
patriarchy. They are rather juxtaposing opposing views of ‘self’ and the ‘Other’ in order to
force their Australian readership to reconcile their purported liberal post-colonial values with
the realities of their deeper feelings about Asia, and thereby to further each Australian’s search
for ‘self’ through a better understanding of the ‘Other’ both within and without.
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