Alison Broinowski reviews the accounts of Australia offered over the last hundred-odd years  by Asian ‘opinion leaders’ – generally  Asian politicians and journalists – but also those within Australia, including the Chinese headmen or community leaders, Colombo Plan students, and Asian-Australian fiction writers. It is perhaps surprising that such a diverse group of commentators from ten Asian countries – divided into the more powerful and more distant East Asian countries of China (including Taiwan and Hong Kong), Japan, Korea and India, and the less powerful but more proximate South-East Asian nations of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Philippines – has a constant refrain, albeit with contradictory undercurrents. The persistent themes are: Australia is ‘a physical space with a geography, but not … a mental space with a history or culture’, sometimes explained in terms of the convict heritage, and variously expressed in anti-intellectualism, simple-mindedness and stupidity; Australia is an economic failure, rich in natural resources but lacking the technology to develop these resources;(settler) Australia has always been White Australia, racist both in relation to indigenous Australians and Asians; Australia is a second-rate Western country, a ‘deputy sheriff’ or ‘dancing monkey’ to the United States, wanting to belong in Asia but not qualifying, although Australia’s aspirations are usually economically motivated; and Australia is marginal and irrelevant to Asia. ‘Australians seem more interested in “Asia” than “Asians” are in them’, even though Australians are accused of being largely ignorant about Asia.