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2.1. Introduction
The Historical Environment
That Australia has had a long and ambivalent relationship with Asia should be no
surprise when one considers the long and ambivalent relationship it has had with itself. There
are, after all, at least three Australias—Aboriginal Australia, White Australia, and Asian
Australia—and until White Australia, by far both the last in longevity and the first in social,
economic and political power, manages to come to terms with itself it is not going to be able to
reconcile its role with respect either to its Aboriginal countrymen, its Asian neighbours, or its
European cousins. Geology teaches that the continent has been moving steadily northward at
about ten centimetres per year for the last 40 million years since it broke away from the ancient
supercontinent called Gondwanaland. From a social and cultural point of view, on the
contrary, Australia has slid around considerably in just the last few centuries: emerging from
somewhere beyond the hazy edges of the ‘known world’ in the 16 th century, creeping onto the
outer fringes of civilisation in the 18 th century, snuggling up to the British Isles during the 19 th
century, then distancing itself from Europe again, gliding through a bittersweet rendezvous
with North America, and finally nearing the position the geographer would have given it all
along, bordering, perhaps even belonging to, Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands. The quest
for place and identity has been so important for white Australians that it—even more so than
any resolution to that quest—seems to have become part of the Australian identity itself.
2.2. From the Edge of the Known World, to Hell on Earth, to Paradise
Richard White, in Inventing Australia: Images and Identity 1688-1980, explores the
evolution of the Australian identity in its first three centuries. 16 th and 17 th century Spanish,
Portuguese, Dutch and English probes of what was called Terra Australis Incognita found little
to satisfy hopes of finding riches there, though the reports of the Antipodes’ strange animals,
plants and men peaked Europe’s fascination. White writes:
Much play was made of the idea that in Australia there was an inversion of
natural laws, an old idea but one that was popularised by Australia’s zoological
oddities. So Australia was the land which was upside-down, topsy-turvy,
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