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Liz Drysdale, a Nitpicker in Southeast Asian Studies

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Liz Drysdale, a Nitpicker in Southeast Asian Studies Liz Drysdale, A nitpicker in Southeast Asian studies What Australian language student in 1964 would not choose to study an Asian language if a good scholarship was available? In an era when people needed encouragement to do this, the ANU offered a version of the prestigious National Undergraduate Scholarship (NUS) to entice students to study the languages of China, Japan and Indonesia. The Oriental Studies Scholarships (OSS) offered the same benefits as the NUS scheme – relief from the paltry ancillary fees charged at that time; a valuable stipend; a book allowance; and free campus accommodation. The pool of OSS applicants was smaller than for the NUS. My Indonesian studies cohort included some who went on to become fine scholars and practitioners — Virginia Hooker; Chris Manning; John Monfries; Ian Proudfoot; Geoff Forrester; and Helen James. Our ‘sempai’ (elders) included Heather Sutherland, Ann Kumar and Barbara Hatley (all to become professors in Indonesian studies); and Graham Alliband and Trish Hamilton (diplomats). The OSS scholarships are no longer offered, but the Department of Indonesian Languages and Literatures in the Faculty of Oriental Studies continued to turn out scholars to populate the programs that grew up around the country. Among them were my students Pam Allen (who joined Barbara Hatley at the University of Tasmania); Helen Creese (University of Queensland); Jan Lingard (who went on to teach at Sydney after succeeding me as Senior Tutor at ANU in 1976); and David Hill (Professor at Murdoch University in WA, and founder of ACICIS (Australian Consortium for ‘In-Country’ Indonesian Studies), the highly effective body that supports Australian students who build a period of study in Indonesia into their undergraduate program). But I am getting ahead of myself. In my first year of university I lived at home. Dad thought I might find it difficult to deal with importunate lads beating down the door of my dormitory room. So I commuted from Campbell, where our kitchen window looked out over the new lake. In 1965 I applied to live at Bruce Hall but was invited instead to become a foundation member of Burton Hall. For the first year that meant sharing a room – in my case with English literature student Maria Wong from Sabah, who became a lifelong friend – while they built the men’s block behind us. That year we had our meals in the Students’ Union, a brisk walk across campus from the Hall. At mealtimes I sat at the ‘overseas students table’. There I made many good friends and became newsletter editor for the Overseas Students Association. Some of these friends later became prominent in the Nauruan, Papua New Guinean and Malaysian governments. A taciturn chap at our table was playwright Alex Buzo. Avuncular Neil Murray, taking a break from teaching in PNG to do an Indonesian studies degree, was there too. In the summer vacation of 1965, I and some classmates were hired to help with the English– Malay Dictionary Project, led by D.J. (Jack) Prentice, and famously employing Bettina Gorton, Australia’s first lady and a fellow student of Indonesian. But what of my studies? The Indonesian honours program was designed largely to produce philologists (who would analyse ancient texts to illuminate the history of the region), or students of modern Indonesian literature. So our study of modern language and literature, and 1 of ‘oriental (later Asian) civilisations’, was supplemented by Old Javanese and Arabic or Sanskrit, the latter two being the languages of the Islamic and Hindu–Buddhist cultures that had influenced pre-colonial Indonesia – and short service courses in Dutch and linguistics. There was no room in the honours program for a major in history, political science or economics. When a fellow student wanted to do an honours sub-thesis on Indonesian politics, he was advised to move to the political science department, whose honours requirements he could not meet while fulfilling those of the Oriental Studies Faculty. These rules were some years later changed to allow students to major in a discipline in the Arts Faculty as part of an Asian studies honours program. At the end of my third year I was a classic case of what was wrong with the honours program of my time – I was not qualified in any discipline. I didn't feel able to write about history or literature, much as we loved Pak Achdiat, a living part of Indonesian literary history and a fine novelist. I didn't want to be a philologist. So I wrote about an Indonesian language textbook for English speakers, drawing on what I had learnt in the one-semester compulsory honours linguistics seminar. My passion for linguistics was feeble at best. But back to 1964–67. The Indonesian professor, Anthony H. (Tony) Johns, a scholar of Islam and of Indonesian literature, had recruited a team of Indonesians to teach Indonesian language and literature and Old Javanese. For some of them, their scholarly and teaching lives meshed well. Pak Soewito taught what he loved week in and week out, and a happy smile rarely left his face. One of his colleagues, who received a blank exam paper from his brightest student, was not so happy. In the department of Asian Civilizations, an eminent scholar of mainland Southeast Asian archaeology was obliged to teach everything Southeast Asia from the history of Angkor Wat to 20th century Philippines politics. His heart was in the former, but he strove cheerfully to interest himself and us in the latter. The high point of my undergraduate studies was a term in first year in Otto van der Sprenkel’s Chinese philosophy course, which formed part of Oriental Civilizations I. It was like being at Oxford. Whatever the flaws in my undergraduate education, now that we have seen the vandalisation of all but a few scraps of the once great Faculty of Asian Studies, and the departure of our luminaries to help Melbourne and other universities to compete with ANU, I am even more grateful that I was once part of it. I then began a Masters in 1968. This thesis too would be about Indonesian language. I made my first trip to Indonesia in the middle of that year (there being no ACICIS or study abroad programs in those days). This was how I met Joan Hardjono, Molly Bondan, Soe Hok Gie (who took me book shopping), Stephen Grenville and Harold Crouch. My old classmate Chris Manning and his wife Liz McNamara, a childhood friend, met me at the airport and drove me to their Bogor village. I sat with their Indonesian Chinese friend Bwee in the car, and my Indonesian conversation started flowing. Chris was a Volunteer Graduate working at the Bogor Agricultural Institute (IPB) and Liz, newly graduated in English and with a Diploma of Education and a year of high school teaching under her belt, was teaching functional agricultural and forestry English at IPB and English literature at the Bogor Institute of Teaching and Education (IKIP). I spent about six weeks in Indonesia on that visit, talking to linguists to clarify some ideas for my Masters. A few months after my return to ANU the Masters was stalled. I took eight months off in 1969 and returned to Bandung. Joan Hardjono introduced me to her colleague Dra Sally 2 Panggabean, who took me under her wing, gave me accommodation and bequeathed some of her English students to me (allowing me to pay her some rent!). I also had a conversation class at Padjadjaran University. The Panggabeans are my Bandung family. When I returned to Canberra in early 1970, I took a part-time job at Daramalan College, a Catholic boys school not far from the ANU. I taught Indonesian and social studies to year 7 and 8 students, and the school arranged my classes so I had good chunks of free time to work on the MA. My supervisor, Darrell Tryon, was on sabbatical, so Jack Prentice took over. This was a better fit: Jack knew Indonesian so I needn’t spend precious supervision time explaining meaning. Jack proved a wonderful friend and mentor, and with his remarkable help I completed the MA and graduated. Next I enrolled in a Diploma of Education. It didn’t matter where I did it, so I moved to the city of my birth, and my favourite bit of it – the University of Melbourne in Carlton. Early in 1971 I and two friends rented a cottage in Station St, Carlton. My room was very small, so my uncle, George Legge, a solicitor and former diplomat, built a desk and a bed to fit in the tiny space. The Dip Ed didn’t have much to do with Southeast Asia. Language teaching was one of my method subjects, and social sciences the other. But I imbibed some of the riches of Melbourne’s Indonesian studies world. Uncle John Legge was at the centre of all that, so I attended some seminars at Monash. I had done the Dip Ed on a Victorian Education Department scholarship, so I expected to be sent to a Victorian school and was bonded to the Department for three years. I was to be sent to Mildura High School. In a sliding door moment, I was contacted by Jean Reid, a former colleague at Daramalan College, mother of Bob Hawke’s women’s adviser, Elizabeth Reid, and sister of the Deputy Principal of what was then Goulburn Teachers College in NSW. The College’s Indonesian lecturer, Vernon Turner, was moving on, and she wondered whether I would be interested in replacing him. I had expected to be a high school teacher, and here was the offer of a tertiary lectureship.
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