Tim Winton started young. His first novel, An Open Swimmer, was published when he was only 21 and still a student at the Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia. His second, Shallows, won the Miles Franklin Award, Australia’s most prestigious literary prize.
Early days
Born in 1960 in Perth, Winton moved as a young boy with his family to the small southern port city of Albany. The oldest permanent settlement in the State of Western Australia, the surrounding area is known for its natural beauty and pristine beaches, with Albany itself the location of the last whaling station in operation in the southern hemisphere until its closing in 1978.
It is location, the landscape and a sense of place that inspires Winton above all else in his writings. And, certainly in many of his novels and short stories, that place is the isolated beauty of Albany (the fictional Angelus) and the Rainbow Coast. “Every vivid experience comes from your adolescence,” states Gail in the collection of short stories published as The Turning in 2005.
But it was the publication, in 1991, of his fifth novel that was the catalyst for Winton to become one of the best-loved and most esteemed of Australian writers.
Cloudstreet
Set over a period of 20 years between 1943 and 1963, two families (the Lambs and the Pickles) separately flee their rural lives and are forced to share a large house at Number One, Cloud Street in the inner-city suburb of West Leederville in Perth.
The Lambs are hardworking, the Pickles not. The novel is a celebration of family, of old-fashioned values set during the conservative but comfortable post-war years, framed by significant world events – World War II, the Korean War and the assassination of J.F.Kennedy. But it also ends before Australia entered the Vietnam War.
It’s a time of relative innocence but which laid the foundations for contemporary Australia. Cloudstreet champions social minorities, the ordinary working person, the disabled.
Now regarded as a seminal work and a contemporary classic of Australian literature, Cloudstreet was an immediate success, collecting Winton his second Miles Franklin Award. It continues to feature at the top of readers’ and critics’ lists of all-time favourite novels and has become an on-going part of the literature curriculum at schools throughout the country.
The novel’s reputation was further enhanced by a hugely successful five-and-a-half hour stage adaptation that toured not only Australia but toured the world for more than two years, including major festivals in London, New York, Washington and Dublin.
Continued Success
Winton moved to Europe for a short time and, again inspired by location, wrote the Ireland-set The Riders, earning him his first Booker Prize shortlist in 1994. He also completed a trilogy of children’s books featuring the ‘surf rat’ Lockie Leonard as the central hero.
But the pull of his home country saw Winton return to Western Australia, with both novels published since his return, Dirt Music (2001) and Breath (2008), collecting the Miles Franklin Awards. He is the first author to win the award outright on four separate occasions (Thea Astley also has four to her name, but on two occasions it was shared). Dirt Music also earned Winton his second Booker Prize shortlist nomination and a swathe of other awards.
Director Philip Noyce (Salt, The Quiet American) has been developing a film adaptation of Dirt Music for a number of years. Cloudstreet was adapted as a six-part television series, broadcast in mid-2011.
In total, Winton has 20 published novels, children’s books, short story collections and works of non-fiction to his name. Rising Water, his first play, commissioned by Melbourne Theatre Company, premiered in August 2011 to critical acclaim.
An Australian Living Treasure
Keeping out of the public eye, the author lives in Fremantle, Western Australia with his wife and three children. Actively involved in the Australian environmental movement and a patron of the Tim Winton Award for Young Writers, he was awarded the Centenary Medal for services to literature and the community.
An Australian Living Treasure, Winton was one of the six writers honoured by Australia Post in 2010 and featured in a series of postage stamps (see Australian Authors: Peter Carey and Australian Authors: Thomas Keneally) of literary legends.
Sources:
- Macmillan Books website. Accessed August 2011.
- Michael Body, 'Cloudstreet: Australia's best-loved novel arrives on the small screen', The Australian, May 2011.
Keith Lawrence - Published writer of articles in magazines, newspapers and websites, predominantly on culture, alongside ghostwriter/editor/copywriter.
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