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officials that Australians love to distrust. Judith’s husband, a lawyer and political aspirant,
tries to programme the way she writes her story on the boat people in Malaysia:
‘Write up the boat people in a way that won’t cause bleeding hearts for
them here. That’ll make it a lot easier for the Party to come out against our
taking too many of them. And that policy is necessary—I shouldn’t have
thought I’d need to explain this—because the unspoken grudge issue at the
next elections will be jobs for all, and Aussies first!’ (TB, 31)
The embassy people love to complain and condescend about the host country and its
indigenous population, as exemplified by one foreign affairs man’s comments: ‘“Malaysia is a
country without a heart” he’d said. “It seems like Paradise. The Chinese are allowed to make
as much money as they like; the Malays are allowed as many privileges as they like, and the
Indians...” he had flicked them away’ (TB, 19).
The Australian vice-consul in Monkeys in the Dark takes special pleasure in explaining
to Alex Wheatfield how the embassy procured the house she was to live in:
‘We’ve got it for free,’ he said. ‘Y’remember that little Javanese bastard
who owned it?’ He winked. ‘Enemy of the People.’
‘What? Has he been arrested?’
‘Yep. The boys in jungle green came round last week. We’ll put in a new
dunny for you with what we save on the rent.’
Alex was frowning. ‘Isn’t that illegal? I mean, we’re just stealing the
house.’
‘Stealing from the Indons? Dearie, they invented stealing.’
She was still frowning. David added, ‘When you’ve been here six months
you’ll understand this town. You’ll sort the place out.’
‘I’m beginning to already,’ she said. (MD, 22)
Staying on the high road as Alex is trying to do is not typical of Australian characters in Asia.
D’Alpuget’s Judith Wilkes in Turtle Beach mimics Alex’s dislike of the rampant stereotyping
of other Westerners, yet is herself hardly innocent. Koh Tai Ann finds it ‘all the more
astonishing and symptomatic of some deeper cultural conditioning that she is basically no
different. Her alienation from the local scene is complete’ (Koh Tai Ann, 29), and,
consequently, so is her alienation from herself.
The Westerners do not limit their condescension to Asians. Alex’s cousin Sinclaire
offers the simplest possible explanation for Australia’s rejection of the U.S. as a role model:
‘You know the Americans have Uncle Sam’s rice in their PX? Only costs eight times as much
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