Academic politics also buzz through the air, with a chair in the offing, and much speculation about the remaining candidates. Somehow the publishers have managed to go on producing books of literary biography and criticism, some of which are launched at the conference, but it’s a little depressing to hear one author announce that she wants critical publishing to continue so that her postgraduates will have somewhere to publish. Although Australian literature is apparently on the decline, the number of Austlit professors rises inversely. One of them, Gillian Whitlock, wins the McRae Russell Prize for a work of literary scholarship with The Intimate Empire.

Ken Gelder’s challenge at last year’s conference to consider the popular is reflected in his committee’s choice of plenary speakers: Meaghan Morris on Ernestine Hill, Robert Dixon on Frank Hurley’s film and travel writing, Ross Gibson on national cultural forms, and Susan Sheridan on women writers in the 1950s. Despite the focus on context, the high literary demands attention. Ross Gibson suggests that Australian film lacks the energy and disruptiveness of some Australian literature; Susan Sheridan would rather talk about Judith Wright and Dorothy Green than the Women’s Weekly. In our panel session on the popular place of literary classics, Elizabeth Webby, Patrick Buckridge and I are rather taken aback at a question suggesting that we’ve been forced to abandon high literature for film, television and women’s magazines. Only last year, we were scorned as upholders of an obsolete national literary canon.

Most of the papers take the conference theme, ‘Beyond Australia/Beyond Australian literature’, to mean beyond the text itself, looking at the role of writers in public debates, or the role of publishers, or the phenomenon of publication during a particular period, or the role of writing in promoting particular worldviews, usually the relationships between Asia and Australia, white Australia and Aboriginal Australia.

Just when I’m yearning for someone to get excited about a good book, preferably one I’ve read, Maggie Nolan throws herself into Nowra’s Radiance and starts us arguing. Then, on Saturday, Joanne Winning reads Eve Langley’s obsession with Oscar Wilde, and Chad Habel examines the novels of Koch and Keneally. The ghost of Frank Hardy appears briefly as Jennifer Hocking reveals that part of the explanation for Hardy’s sojourn in Provence in the late 1970s was his romantic pursuit of Nana Mouskouri! In the other room, Marcia Langton is maintaining the conference sense of anxiety by socking it to the white academics in a panel on post-colonialism. Later in the afternoon, an absorbing panel discussion of Australian Jewish writing reasserts the Melbourneness of the occasion, particularly when Arnold Zable starts talking about his inner-city childhood.

Writers are not as integral to the conference as they were in the past (readings happen after dinner), but then the Australia Council has not supported them this year. Rodney Hall flies in from Europe to receive his Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for The Day We Had Hitler Home at the dinner on Saturday night. Despite the arduous journey, he speaks wittily and graciously. As this is Hall’s second Gold Medal, by now ASAL must seem like family to him.

Hall’s presence, and the title of his novel, remind me that this ASAL has been remarkably uncontroversial. Have I missed some gossip? When David Carter asks me to help a Japanese delegate identify revealing fissures in the Australian literary scene, we can’t think of any since Demidenko and Leon Carmen. Ken Stewart’s verse parody touches on Dame Leonie’s recent strife, but we can sit back and enjoy that from a distance. Ken duly wins the Parody Competition. This year, after the ASAL dinner, the dancers are few – only shameless extroverts like myself. Jill Kitson and I manage to win the Frank Moorhouse Trophy for dance. ASAL in a big city is always a dispersed and transient affair, as opposed to the country conferences (Toowoomba, for example) when ASAL is the only show in town and delegates fall over each other in every coffee shop and pub. Nevertheless, it still maintains that pleasant mix of stalwarts who, between them, know what there is to be known about Aussie Lit, and a floating engagement of postgraduates, writers, friends and, on this occasion, academics who have stopped off on their way to the bigger post-colonial party, the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (ACLALS).

Indeed, a substantial number of ASAL delegates turn up in Canberra the following day for the ACLALS conference. The most energetic of these give papers at both conferences, while Ken Gelder and Lyn McCredden demonstrate their superhuman qualities by organising the ASAL conference then performing at ACLALS, with no sign of reduced energy.

At this conference, the Indians on the fringes of ASAL come into their own. Literature is central here, and the Indian delegates, from whatever part of the world, are passionate about it. In some of the question times, you feel like an eavesdropper on a debate that has an ongoing life outside the conference world. Is Rushdie really an Indian writer or a cosmopolitan? How hybrid can you get? How many meanings can the word ‘diaspora’ have? On Wednesday morning, J.M. Coetzee reads a story about the influence of European traditions on Africa, asserting the continued role for literature in addressing the great moral and social, as well as political, issues. Coetzee now resides in Australia, perhaps demonstrating the obsolescence of those national literature boundaries. I’m sure ASAL will work out how to claim him.

The plenaries demonstrate standards of politeness and wit never seen at an ASAL conference. On the other hand, the massive nature of this conference can be overwhelming. There are five simultaneous sessions for most of the day, with highly varied topics and standards of engagement.

Perhaps the true test of a conference is the dancing. There’s nothing like a man doing a belly-dance to release people’s inhibitions. After the conference dinner, when Jackie Lo, one of the conference organisers, who has also managed to give a paper at ASAL, insists that everyone must dance, the whole conference jumps up to enjoy the West Indian rhythms – even those who assured us at ASAL that ‘Indian men don’t dance’.