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of Australian writers in Asia. Some images represent a ‘fusion of Australian country-bred
values and an instinctive recoil from the directions of Americanised automatism in industry
and life’. Others express counter-culture reactions against Australian socio-cultural
repressions in light of ‘the extremes of experience’ possible in Asian countries (Bennett, 1986,
60). The simple alternative Australians once faced in response to the world of colonies was ‘to
identify with either the colonised or the colonisers’, and, though it ‘was laced with
ambivalence’, white, Western-minded Australians found ‘the choice already made’ (Vickers,
78). Today the alternative is still there, but the choice not nearly so simple. Australia’s
involvement in Southeast Asian wars has led to a more sceptical, ironic response to the Asian
experience, while closer religious involvement has often resulted in quizzical, ironic
questioning of the meaning and value of Eastern mysticism. The importance of all this,
Bennett remarks, is that ‘an increasing self-consciousness is evident as alternative beliefs and
ways of living are contemplated’ by Australian writers (Bennett, 1986, 60). This opening to
the culture and way of life of the Asian ‘Other’ is in Bennett’s view a very positive
development.
It is precisely the view Australians take of Asia which distinguishes them from their
European forefathers. Ron Blaber discusses the developments in travel writing which indicate
how Australians are struggling with, and overcoming, the dilemma of promoting their
relationship with Asia while holding true to their European roots. The Australian world view
has largely been subservient to the European view, and yet, Blaber argues, as Australia has
turned its eyes toward Asia, it has been able to make an assessment of a region which, unlike
any other, is its own. Most Australians once followed the mould in restraining themselves to
writing mostly about European travels, and even when they wrote about travels elsewhere they
tended to be conditioned to seeing the world from a European perspective, but ‘for those
writers who chose to travel through and write about the Asian region certain significant
differences to their British counterparts emerge’ (Blaber, 50). They seem to have been able to
look to Asia ‘with an almost innocent gaze’ due to having been excluded from direct contact
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