'Since its infancy, Westerly has a had a long interest in the literatures and cultures of the Indian Ocean, Southern and eastern Asia. Poised on the west coast, we are constantly looking out, facing away from mainland Australia. This space is not an empty one. It is rich with a history of movement and exchange, going back (as Sarah Ridhuan's essay in this issue reminds us) well beyond Australia's colonisation.' (Editorial introduction)
'People always used to tell me 'Shanghai's not real China'. I heard it from locals, from expats like myself, from visitors who had spent a week or two In Xi'an or Chongqing or Lijiang and thought they should advise me That I wasn't getting the real deal. What they wanted me to knew was that Shanghai, a hub of foreign trade and business, with some of its central districts full of stores like Nike and H&M, was not enough. It was too much like home and not enough like what a foreigner should experience in China.'(Introduction)
I remember there was a backdrop of colossal nimbus clouds shifting They were painting shifting colours of the dissappearing sun. Lightning bolts discharged themselves through their mass and in the narrow gap separating them from the ocean, threads of light crossed in a stitching pattern. A feint rumble hummed across a mirror-cairn sea as her fingers caressed the palm of my hand. With every flash she would gently move them, barely touching my skin. Heavy raindrops fell in slow motion. I felt her breath on my face as she turned towards me. A series of blight flashes lit the sky like a strobe light. Her irises were round and large and black. Strands of her hair tickled my face. We stared into each other. Closer again. Between every flash there was only our breath,the drumming of scattered drops and an increasingly loud rumble. We became so close we were breathing each other. Another bright flash. Close enough to make us both twitch. Our lips touched, just. As the giant cloud fed on hot moisture, it freed a windshear of cold air which swept across the ocean and up the mountainside to reach us. We nudged closer. Our lips touched again and stayed touching. The drumming intensified. And in the flash that followed our eyes were one. Her fingers stopped moving in my palm. ' (Introduction)
'In a late interview with Rodney Wetherell (1979), when she was back in Australia and being interviewed rather more frequently in light of her rather belated status as a great Australian writer, Christina Stead found an intriguing way to deal with the equally frequent questions about the reasons for her expatriation to Europe in 1928. She implied that to be Australian was to be always already a citizen of the sea. Her conflation of national identity and the critical geographical identity of the island continent allowed her to argue that there was no especial volition to 'going abroad'. Ina sense, Stead claimed that she had an automatic 'dual citizenship' drawn from a symbiotic relationship between her marine identity and her Australian one. Of course, therefore, one would travel by sea..' (Introduction)
'Deriving from the Ancient Greek etymons eidos ('form') and eido ('to see'), the modern term `'eidolon' transmutes into English in two interconnected ways: an eidolon can either be an idealised person or thing, or a spectre or phantom. In poetry, the term is often associated with Walt Whitman's poem of the same name, included in his 'Inscriptions' section of the 1881-82 edition of Leaves of Grass. In this apocryphal text, stanzas repeatedly conclude on the word 'eidolon' as if the repetitions are one means (semantic satiation) by which to challenge connections between signified and signifier. The American transcendentalist's poem offers 'a theory ; about how a poet should handle, or mediate, form and materiality' Cohen 1), and the eidolon remains paradoxical for Whitman, a 'spiritual image of the immatrerial' of which 'seeks to demonstrate the incompleteness of our understanding of reality' (Richardson 201)...' (Introduction)
'Since pre-colonial days in northern Australia, cultural practices, material objects and living things have been exchanged and transformed across the sea. Biologists and archaeologists believe that Australia’s dingo was introduced by Asian seafarers around 4,000 years ago. It adapted and spread across the continent and was incorporated within Aboriginal cosmologies. From at least 1700, Makassar fishermen harvested trepang (or sea-cucumber) on an annual basis in Australia, with China also participating in this trade. Anthropologists in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, Alfred Cort Haddon and Donald Thomson, noted the interweaving of cultural traditions among Indigenous populations spread across the Arafura Sea.' (Introduction)
'Since pre-colonial days in northern Australia, cultural practices, material objects and living things have been exchanged and transformed across the sea. Biologists and archaeologists believe that Australia’s dingo was introduced by Asian seafarers around 4,000 years ago. It adapted and spread across the continent and was incorporated within Aboriginal cosmologies. From at least 1700, Makassar fishermen harvested trepang (or sea-cucumber) on an annual basis in Australia, with China also participating in this trade. Anthropologists in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, Alfred Cort Haddon and Donald Thomson, noted the interweaving of cultural traditions among Indigenous populations spread across the Arafura Sea.' (Introduction)
