Australia History

Once again, Australians worry about Asia's opinion of them. It is an old theme but as an expatriate back in the country, I am struck by its bizarre resurgence. Hasn't Australia resolved this issue? Decades ago, it deracialized immigration policy--most immigrants to Australia are Asians--and shifted its international economic involvement from Europe to Asia. Canberra plays an important role in regional diplomacy and trade consultation--being the prime originator of the Asia Pacific Economic Community, whose leaders will meet Nov. 25 in the Philippines.

Kangaroo Island is probably the best place in the modern world to be a kangaroo. If you humans want to have a picnic around here, you will find that the picnic tables are inside a pen and the 'roos hop around outside, watching you. Kangaroos and their smaller cousins, wallabies, aren't the only creatures who have it made on Kangaroo Island. Look up. High in the eucalyptus trees you see little round balls of fur. Those are the koalas, sleeping the day away.

Carolyn See: At first glance, my two favorite books of 1986 seemed satisfyingly different: David Freeman's "A Hollywood Education: Tales of Movie Dreams and Easy Money" (Putnam's) was fiction, medium-sized, and--as the author himself had remarked, with ingenuous modesty--aimed only at a "skinny truth." Robert Hughes' "The Fatal Shore" (Knopf) was nonfiction, large in size and scope; its stated ambition--to cover 80 years of Australia's convict history was prodigious--even overweening.

Alan Bond was the highest of this nation's high fliers, the wildest of its Wild West entrepreneurs. He was the loud-mouthed Aussie who stunned the sporting world in 1983 by winning the America's Cup yacht race. Four years later, he astounded the art world by paying $53.9 million for Van Gogh's "Irises," a then-record price for a painting. Bond was the British-born sign painter who rose from this backwater town to run an $8-billion corporate empire that spanned five continents.

Certain cities have an air of sophistication, others run on th energy of power and politics, and still others simply reek of history. Sydney, Australia, on the other hand, seems primed to party. And what a party is in store for 1988! The United States a decade ago celebrated 200 years of independence after dumping a shipload of tea in Boston Harbor during the great Boston Tea Party to protest English taxes.

Peter Carey is heading out the door of his apartment near Houston Street in New York City, on his way to deposit the $30,000 check that came with his Booker Prize in mid-October, when the phone rings. "It's OK," he grumbles to his caller graciously. "Citibank takes most of it in fees anyway."

A pilgrimage in the footsteps of St. Paul in western Turkey and the Greek Islands of Samos and Patmos is available from May 22 to June 4. Sites to be visited include Istanbul to see the Topkapi Palace and the Blue Mosque. Also planned are a cruise on the Bosporus, a ferry across the Sea of Marmara to Bandirma and a drive to Canakkale along the Strait of Dardanelles. Guests will continue through the ancient cities of Troy, Pergamum, Izmir and Ephesus.

Want to start a new country? Or put a fresh spin on an existing one? Well, after you've drafted a constitution and written the national anthem, there's something else you may want to do: make a movie. In the century or so since film was invented, movie making and nation building often have been parallel projects.

When I first began heading Down Under in the mid-1970s, the term Australian fine dining was an oxymoron. In only a handful of top hotels or in mom-and-pop-run Italian cafes could you even find coffee that wasn't instant. Dining out was a quick trip to the pub for steak and potatoes or to a local carryout joint for burgers adorned with pineapple or sliced beets (the humble beet was, for many years, Australia's unofficial national vegetable).