Tim Winton tackles a troubling new project, 40 years after its acclaimed debut

Tim Winton has been a part-time novelist for the past three years. Yes, he has a book on the go, but he has also written and narrated a documentary about Ningaloo Reef off the north-west coast of Australia. And for once, he wasn’t sure what he was writing: was it homage or elegy? Maybe even a speech; maybe all three. But the documentary turned out to be unsettling.

As is often the case today.

“Look what happened in England and Europe. We have reached the place they told us about but we never thought it would happen. I think anyone who is not afraid [about climate change] just don’t pay attention. If you live close to nature and you have little investment – whether you grow grapes or plants or you swim in the reef – it’s quite a challenge.

A few years ago, Winton told me he was an optimist, so I had to ask: is he still?

Winton in Denmark, Western Australia, in 2008.Credit:Erin Jonasson

“I don’t see any alternative. I have to wake up and revive and stabilize my optimism every day if not every hour, and this is a discipline that I must strengthen and maintain to the best of my ability. Hope isn’t something you just inherit like rich parents or good genes, it’s something you make, create, or create.”

So how do you do it?

“With action. I think we create hope by the actions we take even if it’s just a moment of kindness or tenderness between people. You only see what is possible from what other people around you are doing. You see other people, the best in people. Whether it’s in politics or the arts or commerce, it’s when you see people do something decent they don’t need to do.”

I’m always told you’re too this or that, it’s too Australian and this colloquialism is too difficult.

Tim Winton, author

In August, Winton marked 40 years as a published author. He won a Vogel award for an unpublished manuscript when he was 20 years old, and that first novel, Open Swimmerreached stores in August 1982. Since then, he has won the Miles Franklin award four times, has been shortlisted for Booker several times and wrote cloud roada classic novel that has often been named the most beloved Australian novel of all time.

He has been lauded for his commitment to regional languages ​​in Australian literary fiction and is one of the few Australian writers whose works are literary and sold in large numbers. He writes about Australia, its lands, seas and people for the world, but without compromise. And he’s proud of it.

Tim Winton is depicted in 1984, the year he first won the Miles Franklin award.

“I was published very early internationally and was always told you were too this or that, it was too Australian and this colloquialism was too difficult and the place too foreign and strange. I don’t know which is better, I’m just saying too bad: like or combine. ”

Winton turned 62 in early August. When he was only 10 years old, he knew he wanted to be a writer, planted his flag in the ground, as he said, and told his parents. They must have thought he was crazy.

“Of course. I don’t know any writers, I don’t know what a writer is, I’ve never met anyone, I never met anyone until I was 18 or 19 years old. I didn’t know what life was like writing.”

Neither of his parents finished school, and for a working-class white family in the 1960s, a writer was someone from a different life, place, or era. As he often said, he was constantly being told that he was from the wrong side of the wrong country in the wrong hemisphere. So he is an optimist even supports them, or at least stubborn and defiant.

Cloudstreet’s new cover and, right, Scission’s autographed title page.

But his family – who, when he was 12, moved from Perth to Albany where his father was a traffic cop who specializes in fatal accidents and “deaths, catastrophes at home” – were fully supportive.

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“I used the currency of life that they could have if they were able to make a choice, if they had agency. I also grew up at a time when that culture exploded with unprecedented confidence and the difference between me and my parents was that the Labor Party was in power at a time when the Labor Party really meant something. That’s the dress of social democrats and it’s about liberating people.”

He was at university in Perth when he won the Vogel, and had to board a plane for the first time to go to Sydney.

“It says on the invitation that you have to wear a lounge suit. I have to ask someone what it is. I had to borrow a beige suit from a friend who works in an insurance office, so it was a very different life. How did they let me get away with it? … I literally stepped out of my white working class reality into something of a different world.”

Her life might have been very different if she had started writing when she was older, but she is young, flexible and has energy.

Lots [Cloudstreet] is hard work, but it’s kind of a thrill to write once I find the sound and I have the Lamb whispering in my ear.

Tim Winton, author

When he was a student he met Clives James who told him that no one should write a novel before they turn 40. “I just thought I shouldn’t mention that I’ve written two novels.” At that stage he had already written most of it shallowwho in 1984 became his first Miles winner, and half of the Cutting, his first collection of short stories.

“I think I wrote the best part of the three books when I was an undergraduate. But this [James] is an important person, you don’t want to go against him… You just think it’s fine this guy is a very educated person, but he doesn’t know anything.”

From left: Tom Russell as Fish Lamb, Geoff Morrell as Lester Lamb and Callan McAuliffe as Fast Lamb in the TV adaptation of Cloudstreet.Credit:David Dare Parker

His early years of writing were prolific and demanding. At one point he had three writing desks set up and moved from one to another depending on how each job went, from novels to stories to children’s books.

cloud roadthe beautiful, tame, slightly insane tale of a family of Sheep and Pickles sharing an old house in Perth, is her fifth published novel for adults, Cutting come out, like the first from him Locky Leonard novels for children. But cloud road changed his life and precarious finances and that of his wife Denise, selling more than 60,000 copies in the first nine months and going straight into the heart of the Australian collective. It has also been adapted for the stage and small screen.

Since then, he has published Riders, Dirt Music, Reversal (a collection of related stories), Breath, Eyrie, The Shepherd’s Hut and much more.

Winton at the Sydney Theater Company for the production of his play Signs of Life in 2012.Credit:Marco Del Grande

She remains a little confused with life cloud road have. Although he tends not to reread his books, he does have to see them again when he adapts them for television.

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“All the jokes aside, I remember the fun I had, the joy I had writing them. A lot of it is hard work, but it’s kind of a thrill to write once I find his voice and I have the Lamb whispering in my ear… It feels good to write.

However, there was almost a disaster. On the way from Rome to Athens, he left half the manuscript on the bus fighting with the children and luggage, but luckily an Italian man – “I can kiss that mustachioed Italian man” – saved him.

“I remember the last day, the last page. I was in Greece on Hydra and I just remember standing up and going to the window and looking out and thinking ‘oh well, we can go home now’. It was a good experience.”

There was one strange effect of his longevity that created another life.

“The weird thing is if you live long enough, and you imagine your way into someone else’s life, years later you find yourself in a scene that you’ve already written. And it happened several times. You just think ‘I know this, and I have written that’. And it’s really strange to what extent you have some kind of prophetic capacity or it shows you how boring and mundane your imagination is.”

Tim Winton’s work is published by Penguin.

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