Table Of Contentvisiting the
neighbours
AgnieszkA sobocinskA first set foot in Asia while still in her teens.
The travel bug bit hard and she has since spent several years travel-
ling, living and working throughout the region. She is also an his-
torian and Deputy Director of the National Centre for Australian
Studies at Monash University. With David Walker, she is the co-
editor of Australia’s Asia: From Yellow Peril to Asian Century, which
is being translated into Mandarin. She’s about to take on her big-
gest challenge yet: leading a class of university students on a study
tour of Indonesia.
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v i s i t i n g t h e
n e i g h b o u r s
AustrAliAns in AsiA
AgnieszkA
sobocinskA
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A NewSouth book
Published by
NewSouth Publishing
University of New South Wales Press Ltd
University of New South Wales
Sydney NSW 2052
AUSTRALIA
newsouthpublishing.com
© Agnieszka Sobocinska 2014
First published 2014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research,
criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be
reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the
publisher.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Author: Sobocinska, Agnieszka.
Title: Visiting the neighbours: Australians in Asia/Agnieszka Sobocinska.
ISBN: 9781742233895 (paperback)
9781742241807 (ePub/Kindle)
9781742246994 (ePDF)
Subjects: Australians – Asia.
Australians – Attitudes.
Australia – Relations – Asia.
Asia – Relations – Australia.
Dewey Number: 305.895094
Design Josephine Pajor-Markus
Cover images Dreamstime.com
Printer Griffin Press
All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in
this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The author welcomes information in
this regard.
This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed
forests.
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Contents
Visiting the neighbours 1
1: Imperialists 15
2: Fortune hunters 32
3: Warriors 55
4: Good neighbours 78
5: Humanitarians 102
6: Seekers 120
7: Adventurers and troublemakers 146
8: Tourists 169
9: Sons and daughters 189
People’s diplomats 213
Notes 219
References 245
Acknowledgments 259
Index 261
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Visiting the
neighbours
S
ix months on the Hippie Trail had left their mark on 24-year-
old Richard Neville. He had traded his smart luggage for a dis-
integrating rucksack and now wore an embroidered Afghan coat
and an odd assortment of ethnic jewellery. Neville had changed
in other ways, too. In the mid-1960s, the road to Kathmandu was
‘paved with cannabis’, and it had led him to reflect on life back in
the West. The suburban monotony of Australia paled in compari-
son to the colour and ‘fresh simplicity’ he’d found in Asia, and the
nine-to-five rat race seemed pointless now that he’d seen people
who were happy despite owning next to nothing. Five years later,
Neville published Play Power, a countercultural manifesto in favour
of widespread ‘drop out-ism’. The Hippie Trail was becoming ever
more popular and he thought this might lead to revolutionary
change. ‘How you gonna keep ‘em down’, he asked, ‘after they’ve
seen Kathmandu?’
Not long afterwards, the first-ever Lonely Planet guidebook,
Across Asia on the Cheap, was published for those hoping to follow
in Neville’s footsteps. It opened by asking the most important ques-
tion: ‘Why?’ Its author, Tony Wheeler, had plenty of answers: it
was cheap, it held the mystique of adventure and everyone else was
doing it. By 1973, Asia was so fashionable that ‘there’s almost a
groove worn in the face of the map’. The National Union of Students
1
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Visiting the Neighbours
also published a guidebook, but it offered a different reason: trav-
elling would help Australians form a bond of friendship with their
regional neighbours, which was crucial as the nation groped its way
towards a future that seemed to hinge on Asia.1
Nowadays, half of all residents leaving the country are head-
ing to Asia. One-sixth of the entire population will travel there in
a single year.2 This adds up: almost one-third of Australians have
been to Bali alone.3 Despite the assumption that Australians are
only now discovering Asia, they have been visiting their Asian
‘neighbours’ for well over a hundred years. They have gone there
in peace and war, for business and pleasure, to visit family or to dis-
cover themselves. Some had dreamt of Asia their entire lives, while
others just wanted to get away from home.
This book explores the experience of being an Australian in
Asia over the 20th and 21st centuries, paying particular attention
to the ways in which personal experience intersected with broader
political patterns. Travel and tourism might seem frivolous at first
glance, but because first-hand impressions can be more influential
than academic or media accounts, even fleeting glimpses can shape
an individual’s views about a foreign place. Since the Enlighten-
ment, the notion that ‘seeing is believing’ has become ingrained
in Western thought. In an age of hypermobility, millions of Aus-
tralians returned home thinking that they knew something of Asia
because they had been there and seen it for themselves. Over time,
this vast bank of personal experience had a substantial impact on
popular perceptions of Asia and contributed to momentous shifts in
the way Australians thought about their nation’s place in the region
and the world.
Near Neighbours | Since at least the 1940s, it has
been commonplace to describe Asia as Australia’s neigh-
bourhood. But what does this actually mean? Some neighbours are
2
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Visiting the neighbours
friends who’ll pop around for a chat, but neighbourly relations can
be strained and more than a few heated words have been exchanged
over backyard fences and communal bins. Mostly, I’m on nodding
terms with my neighbours. We exchange polite greetings when we
pass on the street, but otherwise stay out of each other’s business.
Our addresses are the only things that connect us.
The status of ‘neighbour’ is just as ambiguous in international
relations. In the language of diplomacy, placing an emphasis on geo-
graphical proximity can subtly imply the lack of a more meaningful
relationship. Referring to Indonesia or Thailand – not to mention
fairly distant nations such as India and China – as ‘neighbours’ sug-
gests that there is little that brings Australia and Asia together, apart
from the accident of geography. But there is no escaping geography,
so a ‘neighbour’ is also among the most important of all interna-
tional relationships. Closeness can bring benefits (not least by facil-
itating trade), but proximity can also seem menacing. References to
Asian ‘neighbours’ have sometimes carried a dark undertone that
stirred up deep-seeded anxieties about the massive populations and
increasing power of the nations to Australia’s north.
Using terms like ‘neighbour’ serves to personalise international
relations, by inviting ordinary people to draw parallels between their
private lives and the sphere of international relations. In mature
democracies such as Australia, what ordinary citizens think about
foreign places and people can have a direct influence on foreign
policy. Popular opinion obviously matters at the voting booth, but
beyond this politicians and the media interpret international affairs
through the lens of common stereotypes and dominant discourses.
As Edward Said showed in his landmark book Orientalism, pop-
ular assumptions about Others come to appear as commonsense
truths, which profoundly affect those individuals and organisations
charged with conducting international relations, along with the rest
of society.4
So how are dominant ideas about racial and cultural Others
3
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