Abstract:
This paper is a response to a challenge posed to me: to find ways of thinking of
Australia as Asian, rather than an island culture tenaciously clinging to British ancestry
and identification despite indigenous and Eastern influences. What different
understandings of Australian lives and subjectivities might emerge when Australian
lives are seen as Asian also? It seemed appropriate to undertake this experiment in
thinking within the context of the life story of a figure who challenged easy definitions,
spent much of her life between Asia and Australia and belongs to the histories of many
places in the region and relationships between them. This paper uses historical, cultural
and textual analysis to explore the life of Marie Byles, a significant conservationist and
Buddhist, as simultaneously Eastern [1] and Australian through her travel writing, her
interpretations of Buddhist texts for English reading audiences, and her
environmentalism.
