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Island Home
'I grew up on the world’s largest island.'
This apparently simple fact is the starting point for Tim Winton’s beautiful, evocative and sometimes provocative memoir of how Australia's unique landscape has shaped him and his writing.
Wise, rhapsodic, exalted – Island Home is not just a brilliant, moving insight into the life and art of one of our finest writers, but a compelling investigation into the way our country shapes us.
This apparently simple fact is the starting point for Tim Winton’s beautiful, evocative and sometimes provocative memoir of how Australia's unique landscape has shaped him and his writing.
Wise, rhapsodic, exalted – Island Home is not just a brilliant, moving insight into the life and art of one of our finest writers, but a compelling investigation into the way our country shapes us.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published September 23, 2015
169 people are currently reading
2313 people want to read
About the author
Tim Winton
76 books2,366 followersTim Winton was born in Perth, Western Australia, but moved at a young age to the small country town of Albany.
While a student at Curtin University of Technology, Winton wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer. It went on to win The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1981, and launched his writing career. In fact, he wrote "the best part of three books while at university". His second book, Shallows, won the Miles Franklin Award in 1984. It wasn't until Cloudstreet was published in 1991, however, that his career and economic future were cemented.
In 1995 Winton’s novel, The Riders, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, as was his 2002 book, Dirt Music. Both are currently being adapted for film. He has won many other prizes, including the Miles Franklin Award three times: for Shallows (1984), Cloudstreet (1992) and Dirt Music (2002). Cloudstreet is arguably his best-known work, regularly appearing in lists of Australia’s best-loved novels. His latest novel, released in 2013, is called Eyrie.
He is now one of Australia's most esteemed novelists, writing for both adults and children. All his books are still in print and have been published in eighteen different languages. His work has also been successfully adapted for stage, screen and radio. On the publication of his novel, Dirt Music, he collaborated with broadcaster, Lucky Oceans, to produce a compilation CD, Dirt Music – Music for a Novel.
He has lived in Italy, France, Ireland and Greece but currently lives in Western Australia with his wife and three children.
While a student at Curtin University of Technology, Winton wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer. It went on to win The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1981, and launched his writing career. In fact, he wrote "the best part of three books while at university". His second book, Shallows, won the Miles Franklin Award in 1984. It wasn't until Cloudstreet was published in 1991, however, that his career and economic future were cemented.
In 1995 Winton’s novel, The Riders, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, as was his 2002 book, Dirt Music. Both are currently being adapted for film. He has won many other prizes, including the Miles Franklin Award three times: for Shallows (1984), Cloudstreet (1992) and Dirt Music (2002). Cloudstreet is arguably his best-known work, regularly appearing in lists of Australia’s best-loved novels. His latest novel, released in 2013, is called Eyrie.
He is now one of Australia's most esteemed novelists, writing for both adults and children. All his books are still in print and have been published in eighteen different languages. His work has also been successfully adapted for stage, screen and radio. On the publication of his novel, Dirt Music, he collaborated with broadcaster, Lucky Oceans, to produce a compilation CD, Dirt Music – Music for a Novel.
He has lived in Italy, France, Ireland and Greece but currently lives in Western Australia with his wife and three children.
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August 5, 2017
5★
“I grew up on the world’s largest island. . . someone like me, who should know better, can forget he’s an islander. Australia the place is constantly overshadowed by Australia the national idea, the economic enterprise.”
Rightly acclaimed Aussie author Tim Winton’s celebration of life on the island continent should be required reading for those so immersed in counting the metaphorical trees of the economic enterprise that they miss the glorious forest of its unique, ancient landscape.
From the man who led the successful campaign to protect Ningaloo Reef comes a compelling case to WAKE UP. What on earth are we doing? Literally on Earth, not only on his Island Home. Careless use of natural resources and a casual regard for dealing with climate change is making it impossible to preserve what's left of our wilderness and our wildness. As he said recently in The Sydney Morning Herald about a proposed new coal mine:
“But despair is not an option. And cynicism is just cowardice in a mask. Who can afford either?”
Winton describes the Australia he knows and loves and sees us losing. Some of his previous works have featured quirky characters in urban or peri-urban areas, many in his beloved Western Australia. But he has also written about other countries—The Riders takes place in Ireland—and it was while he and his family were living in Paris in 1988 that he identified what was causing their growing discontent.
“For while I’d assumed our mounting mutual fractiousness was the result of cultural fatigue . . . the real source was physical confinement and an absence of wildness.”
His kids weren’t remembering Australia—particularly the parts which have been changed only by nature for centuries. Instead, they were being introduced to the wonders of Europe. Well, that was perhaps the intention. The Alps were beautiful, but where were the wide open spaces he so loved?
“The looming vertical presence of mountains cut me off from the horizon.”
The places he roamed as a boy (and still roams) are along the wild coasts of Western Australia, clambering over beach outcrops, through scrub and brush, resting on rocky ledges overlooking broad vistas, apparently unaltered by humans.
“. . . many Aboriginal adjustments, amendments and embellishments are so discreet they hardly register as impositions; in fact to the unschooled eye they are invisible. In Europe, however, the most dramatic and apparently solitary landscapes are unmistakably modified. . . It took a while to understand that the source of my mounting dismay was a simple lack of relief from my own kind. I had never encountered places so relentlessly denatured.”
Chapter titles are different places and years. Winton’s writing is so clear, that I don’t recall ever feeling confused about when things took place. “Trigg Island, 1966”—little Tim is six. It’s not an island but may have been once. And of course, he is barefoot on this limestone. Alone!
He clambers around near the “treacherous Blue Hole”, which sucks swimmers in, and across the rocks “sharp and gnarly, like the surface of an enormous, hard and pitiless meringue.” He’s heading for a gap where he lowers himself down “inside the rock . . . another world . . . so quiet the intermittent subsea gurgles and burps sound impossibly loud and close.”
This is a six-year-old kid, alone, exploring an underwater cavern with an outgoing tide (for now). He crawls up a shaft to the sand where he spots a pair of teenagers making out, then retreats back down to his secret place.
“But just as I reach the sandy floor a wave thunders against the ramparts, bigger than anything all day, and in moments it rifles through the chambers, spitting, gurgling. The wind of it ruffles my hair like the approach of a train in a tunnel and instantly I’m scrambling for escape. By the time I make it to the vertical shaft the cave is awash. As whitewater wrenches at my shorts I get a handhold and scuttle up into the sun like a startled crab. The lovers barely notice me passing by.”
Photo of Trigg Island, Perth, Western Australia
[I used to know brothers who were turned loose to go spearfishing when they were very little, and I was always terrified for them. They survived their childhood adventures, but sadly, both succumbed to other dangers as very young adults. But I digress.]
Winton compares the natural environment to the built one. [Go and see this if you haven't. He's right!]
“Consider the bewildering scale and complexity of Purnululu, otherwise known as the Bungle Bungles. It’s like a cryptic megacity wrought by engineers on peyote. Humans are unlikely to ever manufacture anything as beautiful and intricate.”
Photo of Purnululu National Park, Western Australia
So they came home to the island that is Australia. I never tire of his writing about the beauty and importance of his favourite places. Unfortunately, not everyone sees things his way.
“Even now I hear it called ‘rubbish country’ because it’s so infertile and resistant to Eurocentric notions of beauty. . .
It’s tough country to move through. The plants are armoured and tick-infested. Clenching sprawls of banksia repel walkers with sandpaper bark and breadknife leaves. But there’s plenty to see, if you’re game. . .
Goannas appear metallic, galvanized by sun; inert as bush junk, they stir when you encroach, holding their ground, flashing their gums like drunks eager to brawl.”
One reason we’re losing land to bulldozers is aerial perspective. If we can see it, we can use it.
“A forest looks so loggable and a red range so exploitable. The aerial perspective doesn’t always reveal intrinsic beauty. Indeed, for a long time the aerial perspective has been a vital tool of commodification, a means of turning land into money. The iron barons of the Pilbara love to recount the flights that supposedly sparked their fortunes.”
His hero since childhood was conservationist Vincent Serventy, who was pivotal in saving the Great Barrier Reef from oil leases. When Western Australia's Ningaloo Reef was threatened by a proposed resort development, Winton found his political voice and led the successful action to protect the area as a World Heritage Site, Ningaloo Marine Park.
https://parks.dpaw.wa.gov.au/park/nin...
It's one of the longest fringing coral reefs on the planet. In this instance, the aerial perspective is necessary to show how big it is.
Aerial photo of Ningaloo Reef
It's not all rocks and reef, though. Winton frequently speaks of the haunting, sometimes frightening, quality of the bush he's wandered through.
“I’ve been to places in the Pilbara and the Kimberley where hidden soaks and sudden breakaways give off a watchfulness, a discomforting presence not easily accounted for. You ask yourself: Did something terrible happen here? Or is this resonance just a signal of the life force in the country? In spots like these it can be a relief to find evidence of ancient culture because it makes some sense of the uncanny sensation. . .
Am I feeling the people of this place or the power they’ve always found in it?”
He, like many, finds it hard to reconcile the light footprint the Aboriginal people managed to leave for thousands of years with the bulldozed legacy following only a couple of hundred years of European 'progress'.
This is a wonderful blend of philosophy, reminiscences, and passionate, persuasive arguments for dealing with the reality of dangerous climate change and saving what we haven't ruined (yet).
I salute Tim Winton and can't recommend this highly enough!
[p.s. I should mention that I located the photographs of the places to help illustrate what he writes about. I read an e-book version of the book, and I don't know if the hardback has any photos or not.]
“I grew up on the world’s largest island. . . someone like me, who should know better, can forget he’s an islander. Australia the place is constantly overshadowed by Australia the national idea, the economic enterprise.”
Rightly acclaimed Aussie author Tim Winton’s celebration of life on the island continent should be required reading for those so immersed in counting the metaphorical trees of the economic enterprise that they miss the glorious forest of its unique, ancient landscape.
From the man who led the successful campaign to protect Ningaloo Reef comes a compelling case to WAKE UP. What on earth are we doing? Literally on Earth, not only on his Island Home. Careless use of natural resources and a casual regard for dealing with climate change is making it impossible to preserve what's left of our wilderness and our wildness. As he said recently in The Sydney Morning Herald about a proposed new coal mine:
“But despair is not an option. And cynicism is just cowardice in a mask. Who can afford either?”
Winton describes the Australia he knows and loves and sees us losing. Some of his previous works have featured quirky characters in urban or peri-urban areas, many in his beloved Western Australia. But he has also written about other countries—The Riders takes place in Ireland—and it was while he and his family were living in Paris in 1988 that he identified what was causing their growing discontent.
“For while I’d assumed our mounting mutual fractiousness was the result of cultural fatigue . . . the real source was physical confinement and an absence of wildness.”
His kids weren’t remembering Australia—particularly the parts which have been changed only by nature for centuries. Instead, they were being introduced to the wonders of Europe. Well, that was perhaps the intention. The Alps were beautiful, but where were the wide open spaces he so loved?
“The looming vertical presence of mountains cut me off from the horizon.”
The places he roamed as a boy (and still roams) are along the wild coasts of Western Australia, clambering over beach outcrops, through scrub and brush, resting on rocky ledges overlooking broad vistas, apparently unaltered by humans.
“. . . many Aboriginal adjustments, amendments and embellishments are so discreet they hardly register as impositions; in fact to the unschooled eye they are invisible. In Europe, however, the most dramatic and apparently solitary landscapes are unmistakably modified. . . It took a while to understand that the source of my mounting dismay was a simple lack of relief from my own kind. I had never encountered places so relentlessly denatured.”
Chapter titles are different places and years. Winton’s writing is so clear, that I don’t recall ever feeling confused about when things took place. “Trigg Island, 1966”—little Tim is six. It’s not an island but may have been once. And of course, he is barefoot on this limestone. Alone!
He clambers around near the “treacherous Blue Hole”, which sucks swimmers in, and across the rocks “sharp and gnarly, like the surface of an enormous, hard and pitiless meringue.” He’s heading for a gap where he lowers himself down “inside the rock . . . another world . . . so quiet the intermittent subsea gurgles and burps sound impossibly loud and close.”
This is a six-year-old kid, alone, exploring an underwater cavern with an outgoing tide (for now). He crawls up a shaft to the sand where he spots a pair of teenagers making out, then retreats back down to his secret place.
“But just as I reach the sandy floor a wave thunders against the ramparts, bigger than anything all day, and in moments it rifles through the chambers, spitting, gurgling. The wind of it ruffles my hair like the approach of a train in a tunnel and instantly I’m scrambling for escape. By the time I make it to the vertical shaft the cave is awash. As whitewater wrenches at my shorts I get a handhold and scuttle up into the sun like a startled crab. The lovers barely notice me passing by.”
Photo of Trigg Island, Perth, Western Australia
[I used to know brothers who were turned loose to go spearfishing when they were very little, and I was always terrified for them. They survived their childhood adventures, but sadly, both succumbed to other dangers as very young adults. But I digress.]
Winton compares the natural environment to the built one. [Go and see this if you haven't. He's right!]
“Consider the bewildering scale and complexity of Purnululu, otherwise known as the Bungle Bungles. It’s like a cryptic megacity wrought by engineers on peyote. Humans are unlikely to ever manufacture anything as beautiful and intricate.”
Photo of Purnululu National Park, Western Australia
So they came home to the island that is Australia. I never tire of his writing about the beauty and importance of his favourite places. Unfortunately, not everyone sees things his way.
“Even now I hear it called ‘rubbish country’ because it’s so infertile and resistant to Eurocentric notions of beauty. . .
It’s tough country to move through. The plants are armoured and tick-infested. Clenching sprawls of banksia repel walkers with sandpaper bark and breadknife leaves. But there’s plenty to see, if you’re game. . .
Goannas appear metallic, galvanized by sun; inert as bush junk, they stir when you encroach, holding their ground, flashing their gums like drunks eager to brawl.”
One reason we’re losing land to bulldozers is aerial perspective. If we can see it, we can use it.
“A forest looks so loggable and a red range so exploitable. The aerial perspective doesn’t always reveal intrinsic beauty. Indeed, for a long time the aerial perspective has been a vital tool of commodification, a means of turning land into money. The iron barons of the Pilbara love to recount the flights that supposedly sparked their fortunes.”
His hero since childhood was conservationist Vincent Serventy, who was pivotal in saving the Great Barrier Reef from oil leases. When Western Australia's Ningaloo Reef was threatened by a proposed resort development, Winton found his political voice and led the successful action to protect the area as a World Heritage Site, Ningaloo Marine Park.
https://parks.dpaw.wa.gov.au/park/nin...
It's one of the longest fringing coral reefs on the planet. In this instance, the aerial perspective is necessary to show how big it is.
Aerial photo of Ningaloo Reef
It's not all rocks and reef, though. Winton frequently speaks of the haunting, sometimes frightening, quality of the bush he's wandered through.
“I’ve been to places in the Pilbara and the Kimberley where hidden soaks and sudden breakaways give off a watchfulness, a discomforting presence not easily accounted for. You ask yourself: Did something terrible happen here? Or is this resonance just a signal of the life force in the country? In spots like these it can be a relief to find evidence of ancient culture because it makes some sense of the uncanny sensation. . .
Am I feeling the people of this place or the power they’ve always found in it?”
He, like many, finds it hard to reconcile the light footprint the Aboriginal people managed to leave for thousands of years with the bulldozed legacy following only a couple of hundred years of European 'progress'.
This is a wonderful blend of philosophy, reminiscences, and passionate, persuasive arguments for dealing with the reality of dangerous climate change and saving what we haven't ruined (yet).
I salute Tim Winton and can't recommend this highly enough!
[p.s. I should mention that I located the photographs of the places to help illustrate what he writes about. I read an e-book version of the book, and I don't know if the hardback has any photos or not.]
August 2, 2017
I’ve been in love/obsessed with Tim Winton’s writing since 2004, when a work colleague lent me Cloudstreet.
Truth be told, there aren’t that many prestigious writers, artists or scientists who came from Western Australia. While it’s the biggest state in Australia, it’s what I would call a mainly blue-collar state, where mining, agriculture and other primary industries prevail. It’s conservative and a bit backwards. I say this with love. Anyway, Tim Winton is a Western Australian treasure. (I cringe as I write this, but I can’t come up with a better expression).
This was the first non-fiction book by Tim Winton that I’ve read.
Island Home is an ode in prose to Australia, in particular to Western Australia. How timely that I read this book, just as I am about to turn fifteen years of living in Perth, Western Australia.
The land and the ocean, the environment, have been protagonists in all Winton’s books, because geography shapes us.
Tim Winton has the uncanny ability to make me feel me homesick for Perth, for Western Australia, a feeling that’s usually reserved for one’s childhood environment/country. I’m afraid I don’t have the ability to fully convey how his books make me feel, except that I’m always enthralled.
This collection of essays was another example of Winton’s craftsmanship and proof of his love for the land and the ocean. Tim Winton is an ardent supporter of the marine environment, of protecting the environment, so much so, he’s put aside his obvious apprehension of being in the spotlight to become a spokesperson for different environmental causes. I admire him greatly.
I enjoyed learning some more things about Western Australia’s history and I particularly liked Tim Winton’s childhood recollections. And the fact that I know most of the places, although many just by name, made this book even more special.
Partly a memoir, partly “a call to arms” as the review in the Guardian called it, Island Home is informative, memorable and enlightening.
David Tredinnick, the narrator of this audiobook, was superb!
Last year, a dream came true: I got 7 of Tim Winton's books signed by him. Even he was impressed with the number of books I brought to the signing. :-)
https://images.gr-assets.com/photos/1...
I've read this to go towards the Aussie Author Challenge hosted by Book Lover Book Reviews at http://bookloverbookreviews.com/readi...
Truth be told, there aren’t that many prestigious writers, artists or scientists who came from Western Australia. While it’s the biggest state in Australia, it’s what I would call a mainly blue-collar state, where mining, agriculture and other primary industries prevail. It’s conservative and a bit backwards. I say this with love. Anyway, Tim Winton is a Western Australian treasure. (I cringe as I write this, but I can’t come up with a better expression).
This was the first non-fiction book by Tim Winton that I’ve read.
Island Home is an ode in prose to Australia, in particular to Western Australia. How timely that I read this book, just as I am about to turn fifteen years of living in Perth, Western Australia.
The land and the ocean, the environment, have been protagonists in all Winton’s books, because geography shapes us.
Tim Winton has the uncanny ability to make me feel me homesick for Perth, for Western Australia, a feeling that’s usually reserved for one’s childhood environment/country. I’m afraid I don’t have the ability to fully convey how his books make me feel, except that I’m always enthralled.
This collection of essays was another example of Winton’s craftsmanship and proof of his love for the land and the ocean. Tim Winton is an ardent supporter of the marine environment, of protecting the environment, so much so, he’s put aside his obvious apprehension of being in the spotlight to become a spokesperson for different environmental causes. I admire him greatly.
I enjoyed learning some more things about Western Australia’s history and I particularly liked Tim Winton’s childhood recollections. And the fact that I know most of the places, although many just by name, made this book even more special.
Partly a memoir, partly “a call to arms” as the review in the Guardian called it, Island Home is informative, memorable and enlightening.
David Tredinnick, the narrator of this audiobook, was superb!
Last year, a dream came true: I got 7 of Tim Winton's books signed by him. Even he was impressed with the number of books I brought to the signing. :-)
https://images.gr-assets.com/photos/1...
I've read this to go towards the Aussie Author Challenge hosted by Book Lover Book Reviews at http://bookloverbookreviews.com/readi...
November 28, 2016
Island Home is like no other memoir I have ever read before. Aussie author Tim Winton’s passion and love for this vast country of ours is absolute – his writing is masterful and evocative, insightful and powerful, and totally beautiful.
From the author’s opening sentence - 'I grew up on the world’s largest island’ – to the very last page, his words instil in us again and again, the beauty of this rugged country and how proud we are to call ourselves Australian.
Thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended.
From the author’s opening sentence - 'I grew up on the world’s largest island’ – to the very last page, his words instil in us again and again, the beauty of this rugged country and how proud we are to call ourselves Australian.
Thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended.
August 27, 2023
This is not a verdict on Winton's writing, which is essentially unimproveable, but rather my enjoyment in reading it. This book of essays is largely dedicated to the inescapable and depressing topic of environmental destruction wrought by my species over the past 100 years or so. I recognize the importance of this topic, and am highly aligned with his views. I guess the paradox is the more effectively one writes about this, the more depressing it is to read.
On the other hand, there were several essays about other topics that were interesting and educational, largely about his upbringing and journey as a writer. One of my favorite essays was called Barefoot and Unhurried, and asks a great question:
His reminiscences are different that most writers I've read, focusing as they do on the natural world, sure, but a part of the world that was completely unfamiliar to me. His family spent a couple of years in Albany, one of the most southerly (i.e., coldest) points in Australia, a land which was a blank space on my mental map. He did a nice job contrasting the gingerbread Victorian appearance of the town with the great work barns, the fish cannery, the abbatoir, the wool mill and the superphosphate factory, chugging and roaring day and night, every one of the spewing effluent into the harbor. It honked down there. The esuarine shallows were livid with algal blooms and ramparts of toxic slime mounted around the shore. The water's edge, you quickly understood, was bloody, dirty and dangerous.
And it was Albany in which he learned to surf, a skill he writes about so effectively about in his novel Breath. He notes that Half of a young man's rebelliousness is the quest for a worthy force, something large to submit to. Like Winton, I chose the ocean and its waves. Flying across a breaking swell, I loved the giddy speed, but what I needed most was the feeling of being monstered by a force beyond my control. This was how I came to understand nature and landscape. By submitting.
Winton is wise, and writes well, and writes about worthwhile topics. If I've gained nothing else from Goodreads, I've gained that.
On the other hand, there were several essays about other topics that were interesting and educational, largely about his upbringing and journey as a writer. One of my favorite essays was called Barefoot and Unhurried, and asks a great question:
What a blessing it is to be too young to drive, to be without a watch, to never really submit to the power of the timetable. How can you view a child's mulish refusal to wear shoes or clothes as anything but wisdom?
His reminiscences are different that most writers I've read, focusing as they do on the natural world, sure, but a part of the world that was completely unfamiliar to me. His family spent a couple of years in Albany, one of the most southerly (i.e., coldest) points in Australia, a land which was a blank space on my mental map. He did a nice job contrasting the gingerbread Victorian appearance of the town with the great work barns, the fish cannery, the abbatoir, the wool mill and the superphosphate factory, chugging and roaring day and night, every one of the spewing effluent into the harbor. It honked down there. The esuarine shallows were livid with algal blooms and ramparts of toxic slime mounted around the shore. The water's edge, you quickly understood, was bloody, dirty and dangerous.
And it was Albany in which he learned to surf, a skill he writes about so effectively about in his novel Breath. He notes that Half of a young man's rebelliousness is the quest for a worthy force, something large to submit to. Like Winton, I chose the ocean and its waves. Flying across a breaking swell, I loved the giddy speed, but what I needed most was the feeling of being monstered by a force beyond my control. This was how I came to understand nature and landscape. By submitting.
Winton is wise, and writes well, and writes about worthwhile topics. If I've gained nothing else from Goodreads, I've gained that.
November 9, 2019
A memoir about landscape is really not my thing - my favorite parts of this book are when Winton talks about himself and his family. But I picked this up because I love this author who manages to make anything interesting.
March 12, 2017
"The land remains a tantalizing and watchful presence over our shoulder. We've imbibed it unwittingly: it's in our bones like a sacramental ache."I really enjoyed this exploration of how landscape effects us. Tim Winton's island home is the often overlooked area of Western Australia. He looks at the history of the area in vignettes from his own life, and his writing transports the reader to an unusual place of decreasing wildness.
"There are no wastelands in our landscape quite like those we've created ourselves."I kept thinking of Edward Abbey and Desert Solitaire, the way the landscape writing moves easily into a clear call for environmental protection of that space. And that is high praise, because Abbey made me long for a desert I've never seen, and Winton makes me long for the Australia I've never experienced. His descriptions of the beauty and underlying danger/unknown of strangeness really called to me. I know how Australia can get under your skin, and I've only seen the pretty standard parts of marsupials, coastline, and jungle.
(Side note: I have never read his novels, and need to.)
Thanks to the publisher for sending an ARC my way!
October 5, 2021
Do you need to be Aussie to really "get" this novel? Not sure, but certainly it must lend a deeper appreciation! Having said that, I feel tempted to package copies of this book up and send them to my friends and family all over the world, so they can enjoy a little bit of authentic aussie-ness (if that's a legit adjective!)
Turning the pages, as Winton reminisces his Australian experience from boyhood right through to his role as a grandfather, I can practically smell the unmistakeable scent of eucalyptus and the rough sensation of salt spray on my face. This is Australia encapsulated in a neat 200 odd pages.
Western born, Winton's account is partcicularly pertinent to the west Australian experience - lot of sand, lot of coastline, a huge amount of empty space. He speaks to the harsh realities of both colonialisim (invasion) of indigenous sacred lands and the displacement of the first peoples of this vast island continent, equally he frankly exposes the shameful impacts of unfettered urbanisation and economic growth and the irreversible damage it has done to the environment and native wildlife.
Winton is not shy in the regard, he tells it as it is. Shameful. Nevertheless, the novel is imbued with an irrevocable longing for this 'island home,' as in the end, for better or worse, isn't home where our memories tell us it is, where we feel safe (whether real or imagined) and despite all challenges, where our inner compass continues to flicker back to...?
And just look at that inviting, irrefutably Aussie cover - doesn't that make you want to just plonk on a people free stretch of sand and open to page 1?
Turning the pages, as Winton reminisces his Australian experience from boyhood right through to his role as a grandfather, I can practically smell the unmistakeable scent of eucalyptus and the rough sensation of salt spray on my face. This is Australia encapsulated in a neat 200 odd pages.
Western born, Winton's account is partcicularly pertinent to the west Australian experience - lot of sand, lot of coastline, a huge amount of empty space. He speaks to the harsh realities of both colonialisim (invasion) of indigenous sacred lands and the displacement of the first peoples of this vast island continent, equally he frankly exposes the shameful impacts of unfettered urbanisation and economic growth and the irreversible damage it has done to the environment and native wildlife.
Winton is not shy in the regard, he tells it as it is. Shameful. Nevertheless, the novel is imbued with an irrevocable longing for this 'island home,' as in the end, for better or worse, isn't home where our memories tell us it is, where we feel safe (whether real or imagined) and despite all challenges, where our inner compass continues to flicker back to...?
And just look at that inviting, irrefutably Aussie cover - doesn't that make you want to just plonk on a people free stretch of sand and open to page 1?
May 18, 2018
This memoir in short essays explores how the Australian landscape formed the author’s life and writing. Australia is, of course, the world’s largest island, and it has endemic flora and fauna and a unique character. The pieces remember thrilling encounters with nature and skip between Winton’s childhood, his children’s growing-up years, and the recent past. I especially liked “The power of place,” about his early love for writers who “embraced the particulars of their place and the music of their own vernacular” and his belief that “story proceeded from the logic of an ecosystem,” and “The steel cocoon,” about the modern reliance on the car and how it mutes our experience of nature. My favorite single moment is when he comes across mummified kangaroos in a cave in 2009.
There’s a strong environmentalist message to the book. How could there not be? Left to our own devices we’ll destroy everything that makes any natural landscape unique. Back in the 1970s Winton witnessed the rise of the environmentalist movement as activists shut down the whaling industry in Albany, and more recently he was part of the campaign to preserve Ningaloo Reef. “This earth is our home, our only home,” he writes. “And if home and family aren’t sacred, what else can be? The dirt beneath our feet is sacred.”
This is the first I’ve read from Winton. If his fiction is as gorgeously written as this, it’s sure it to be excellent.
Other favorite passages:
“To be a writer preoccupied with landscape is to accept a weird and constant tension between the indoors and the outdoors.”
“I live in the littoral zone where terrestrial raptors like grey falcons cross paths with sea eagles. Getting old, you feel barefoot even in shoes. You feel the wild world anew. You’re relearning things you didn’t even realize you’d forgotten.”
“The whole plateau is choking with life and we chug against this mad plenitude like a boat in a sluggish, druggy sea.” (almost like poetry, that)
There’s a strong environmentalist message to the book. How could there not be? Left to our own devices we’ll destroy everything that makes any natural landscape unique. Back in the 1970s Winton witnessed the rise of the environmentalist movement as activists shut down the whaling industry in Albany, and more recently he was part of the campaign to preserve Ningaloo Reef. “This earth is our home, our only home,” he writes. “And if home and family aren’t sacred, what else can be? The dirt beneath our feet is sacred.”
This is the first I’ve read from Winton. If his fiction is as gorgeously written as this, it’s sure it to be excellent.
Other favorite passages:
“To be a writer preoccupied with landscape is to accept a weird and constant tension between the indoors and the outdoors.”
“I live in the littoral zone where terrestrial raptors like grey falcons cross paths with sea eagles. Getting old, you feel barefoot even in shoes. You feel the wild world anew. You’re relearning things you didn’t even realize you’d forgotten.”
“The whole plateau is choking with life and we chug against this mad plenitude like a boat in a sluggish, druggy sea.” (almost like poetry, that)
May 13, 2016
No one writes more evocatively about childhood and the Australian experience than Tim Winton. I find it hard to be objective about his work, because I am the same age as him and grew up in similar places and circumstances and so almost every page that he writes validates (or challenges) my own memories and experience. This makes reading his work and constant dialogue between author and reader, often excited and grateful, occasionally tetchy.
While I admire Winton’s novels, I find that the things that I enjoy most about them are the little details of landscape and life – obviously drawn from personal experience – that do not really need a fictional framework to carry them. Such details are scattered throughout the novels, but this collection of autobiographical essays – some brief fragments, some discursive essays – contains them in abundance. It has more plums than pudding.
The least effective sections are the ones where the ecological agenda is clearest, but that is to be expected. The most effective are the most personal.
There has been a revival of literary nature writing – or ‘place writing’ – in the UK in recent years, led by writers such as Roger Deakin and Robert Macfarlane. Australia has been lacking in such writing – in prose, not poetry – although Roger Macdonald’s beautifully titled ‘The Tree in Changing Light’ is a recent exception. Essays, meditations and memoirs tend to be treated as sidelines to, or distractions from, a writer’s ‘serious’ (i.e. fictional) work. I hope there will be more books like this.
While I admire Winton’s novels, I find that the things that I enjoy most about them are the little details of landscape and life – obviously drawn from personal experience – that do not really need a fictional framework to carry them. Such details are scattered throughout the novels, but this collection of autobiographical essays – some brief fragments, some discursive essays – contains them in abundance. It has more plums than pudding.
The least effective sections are the ones where the ecological agenda is clearest, but that is to be expected. The most effective are the most personal.
There has been a revival of literary nature writing – or ‘place writing’ – in the UK in recent years, led by writers such as Roger Deakin and Robert Macfarlane. Australia has been lacking in such writing – in prose, not poetry – although Roger Macdonald’s beautifully titled ‘The Tree in Changing Light’ is a recent exception. Essays, meditations and memoirs tend to be treated as sidelines to, or distractions from, a writer’s ‘serious’ (i.e. fictional) work. I hope there will be more books like this.
May 6, 2017
As Tim Winton said, 'I grew up on the world's largest island.' This ‘island’, Australia, or continent as most people think of it, has had humans living there for thousands of years. These original people had over these millennia to come to an incredibly in-depth understanding of their landscape and how to tread lightly on it. It was a similar relationship to his locality that inspired Tim Winton as a child. Growing up in Karrinyup amongst the coastal landscape of beaches, rock pools and swamps meant for a fantastic childhood, but also the very soul of the land percolated into his very being and became the well of inspiration for his writing.
His experiences growing up also gave him a passionate desire to see the wildest places of his nation saved for future generations. For the past 200 years, the European immigrants have taken much from the land and the native Aboriginals, and have left it polluted and devastated. Winton has spent time in the UK and other places, but the bond with this hard and frequently dangerous landscape have had a lasting impression on him. This is an enjoyable book to read as Winton is such a talented author and it is a good companion volume to Land’s Edge, which I think is even better than this.
His experiences growing up also gave him a passionate desire to see the wildest places of his nation saved for future generations. For the past 200 years, the European immigrants have taken much from the land and the native Aboriginals, and have left it polluted and devastated. Winton has spent time in the UK and other places, but the bond with this hard and frequently dangerous landscape have had a lasting impression on him. This is an enjoyable book to read as Winton is such a talented author and it is a good companion volume to Land’s Edge, which I think is even better than this.
October 21, 2015
I am flabbergasted by Tim Winton's skill. I'm pretty much always in awe of his writing, and I can't help but marvel over the fact that I am so consistently shell-shocked by the uncanny sense of PRESENCE that exudes from it. "Place" has always been a major character in Winton's body of work, and in Island Home, a book all about "place", we really see it shine. In my view, this is a must read for all fans of Winton, but mostly this a book for fans of place, and (perhaps more specifically) of Australia.
December 15, 2017
2.5 stars
The cons way out the goods.
I did enjoy parts of this book because it was written about Australia, my country. The way Winton describes nature is overpowering and raw. Australia is truly beautiful and I believe this book describes the landscapes of country in a unique and exotic way. Although, most of the book is focused on Western Australia and its dry lands. WA has a very different climate, ecological system and lifestyle compared to other parts of Australia. I did not like the way Winton described the urban parts of Australia as destructive. I felt Winton forced his opinions down my throat sometimes and his urge to be right was suffocating. Close to the end of the book I seemed to have had enough of his complaining.
The cons way out the goods.
I did enjoy parts of this book because it was written about Australia, my country. The way Winton describes nature is overpowering and raw. Australia is truly beautiful and I believe this book describes the landscapes of country in a unique and exotic way. Although, most of the book is focused on Western Australia and its dry lands. WA has a very different climate, ecological system and lifestyle compared to other parts of Australia. I did not like the way Winton described the urban parts of Australia as destructive. I felt Winton forced his opinions down my throat sometimes and his urge to be right was suffocating. Close to the end of the book I seemed to have had enough of his complaining.
March 24, 2024
I recently bought this along with Lands Edge (a book so beautifully written I was constantly stopping to underline several words or phrases every page). This book is also full of wonderfully unique similes (a Woolworths bag flaps like a crippled cockatoo on the roadside) and Wintonesque language but it's equally a memoir of his life and upbringing as much as the land he loves.
Passages about his experiences writing and the early reception of his work are quite telling. Winton luxuriates in, and fully exercises, his local land, flora and fauna, as well as WA vernacular, something he was not only criticised for by non-Australians, but disgracefully, even more by east coast Australians who were more worried about 'what NY would think'. Winton rightfully points out that we have had overseas (mainly US) jargon jammed down our throats to assimilation point for years - why is it a one way street?
Tim Winton has dragged Australian writing a long way since then, but those attitudes are never far away. I was chuffed to read that in Cloud Street he claims to have even made up a lot of the 'vernacular'. If it's good enough for Shakespeare...?
Winton is also not afraid to step in to fight for the environment and the sacredness of the land and he has some interesting things to say on this subject, too. Almost like an artist defending his paints, brushes and models...but it's so much more than that of course.
Tim Winton is a a national treasure, a prophet of the lyric phrase, a soothsayer, a voice in the wilderness. May he write many many more books yet.
Passages about his experiences writing and the early reception of his work are quite telling. Winton luxuriates in, and fully exercises, his local land, flora and fauna, as well as WA vernacular, something he was not only criticised for by non-Australians, but disgracefully, even more by east coast Australians who were more worried about 'what NY would think'. Winton rightfully points out that we have had overseas (mainly US) jargon jammed down our throats to assimilation point for years - why is it a one way street?
Tim Winton has dragged Australian writing a long way since then, but those attitudes are never far away. I was chuffed to read that in Cloud Street he claims to have even made up a lot of the 'vernacular'. If it's good enough for Shakespeare...?
Winton is also not afraid to step in to fight for the environment and the sacredness of the land and he has some interesting things to say on this subject, too. Almost like an artist defending his paints, brushes and models...but it's so much more than that of course.
Tim Winton is a a national treasure, a prophet of the lyric phrase, a soothsayer, a voice in the wilderness. May he write many many more books yet.
June 7, 2017
A landscape memoir, fulled with such beautiful language and wonderful descriptions of Australia that give you a sense of place and time. Makes me want to go out into nature and just sit and look and listen.
This is the first I read of Winton and I'm thrilled to know the author has written over 20 novels I can look forward to.
Small bits from the memoir I thought were wonderful, hard to choose though the whole thing was fabulous.
From the arid
"There's no suggestion of water anywhere and yet everything I see has been formed by torrents. The range is a remnant reef and ancient uplift but the ragged surface is the work of cyclonic rains. The gouges and gutters I pick my way up are older than human time but the dams of shale that choke them could be as recent as last year. Under foot, in silent darkness, mysterious stygofauna swim and bristle. The entire range is honeycombed with freshwater caves, forming an elaborate limestone karst system of a scale and richness that beggars itself."
to the ocean
I walk the flats at low tide. The first rays of sun sting my bare back. the outfalling sea has left a vast, ribbed field of sandy pools and rivulets like and abandoned kingdom....then I see a bright shell at the far end of the pool. It's like a half-buried cowrie, brilliant with splashes of purple and yellow-brown and blue, and in this tawny sandscape the colors are extravagant; it looks ravishing. As I stoop to reach for it....that's not a shell - it's a blue-ringed octopus. The tiny creature's main weapon is a neurotoxin twelve hundred times stronger than cyanide.
This is the first I read of Winton and I'm thrilled to know the author has written over 20 novels I can look forward to.
Small bits from the memoir I thought were wonderful, hard to choose though the whole thing was fabulous.
From the arid
"There's no suggestion of water anywhere and yet everything I see has been formed by torrents. The range is a remnant reef and ancient uplift but the ragged surface is the work of cyclonic rains. The gouges and gutters I pick my way up are older than human time but the dams of shale that choke them could be as recent as last year. Under foot, in silent darkness, mysterious stygofauna swim and bristle. The entire range is honeycombed with freshwater caves, forming an elaborate limestone karst system of a scale and richness that beggars itself."
to the ocean
I walk the flats at low tide. The first rays of sun sting my bare back. the outfalling sea has left a vast, ribbed field of sandy pools and rivulets like and abandoned kingdom....then I see a bright shell at the far end of the pool. It's like a half-buried cowrie, brilliant with splashes of purple and yellow-brown and blue, and in this tawny sandscape the colors are extravagant; it looks ravishing. As I stoop to reach for it....that's not a shell - it's a blue-ringed octopus. The tiny creature's main weapon is a neurotoxin twelve hundred times stronger than cyanide.
May 29, 2016
I started this as an audio book...only my second audio experience and I really wasn't enjoying it. I felt that in listening to this I missed a lot of the nuances, lyrical language and wonderful descriptions that are so much a part of Winton's writing. I ended up finishing it as a physical book and going back and rereading some chapters that I felt I missed parts of in the listening. I'm so glad I did because the writing as always with Winton and his description of time and place was exquisite. I was able to take in so much more as I read. I started off thinking this was a memoir, an autobiography and although it was partly that what it mostly was, was a homage to Australia, to this wonderful land of ours and to how we all, including Winton fit into this vast land. Winton shows us our wonderful country through the eyes of young boys, Aborigines, migrants, the young and the old. He shows us his Australia through his experiences, adventures and writing and mostly he makes us proud to be Aussies living in this amazing land.
March 17, 2016
A collection of essays about Winton's various experiences of different parts and aspects of Australia, mostly in his state of Western Australia. I enjoyed it but I'm not sure how well it would "translate" to non-Australians because his use of the vernacular. His passion comes through very clearly, and as I share his love for the harsh beauty of Australia, and his anger at the destruction being wrought through mining and other industry.
February 8, 2020
Interesting and beautifully written.
I was quite taken aback how much I enjoyed listening to a story that is more about the environment than Tim Winton’s life story.
This truly is a gorgeous, poetic, powerful and evocative memoir.
I was quite taken aback how much I enjoyed listening to a story that is more about the environment than Tim Winton’s life story.
This truly is a gorgeous, poetic, powerful and evocative memoir.
May 7, 2021
No one is as homesick as an Aussie abroad and no one is as eloquent as a Tim Winton writing about his love of home and his relationship with the Aussie landscape.
Beautiful to listen to. I'll come back to this audiobook again.
Beautiful to listen to. I'll come back to this audiobook again.
February 9, 2017
I’m a huge fan of Tim Winton and he is one of my ultimate literary heroes. I love his writing style and I love his stories and the way he characterises relationships.
I had to get that comment out first, as Island Home is not a Tim Winton novel/story and it is not, for me, comparable to the Tim Winton I love to read.
Island Home is part story telling, part memoir and part argument. I have a great deal of appreciation for the first two aspects but not much for the last.
Throughout the text you will find Winton’s usual brilliant writing style with its rich relational subjects and beautiful prose. Some of the stories I just loved and they stand by themselves as great stories. I loved also his memoirs, particularly about the development of his writing style and career.
But this is more than a memoir and more than a story – Winton is writing to make a point. The point is about our wonderful land, its natural beauty and the way that natural environment has been plundered and disrespected by our colonial forebears and successive governments. Notably, he also talks about many of the champions of the land, and this is very informative and inspiring. I find no personal disagreement with the thrust of Winton’s argument, which he tries to weave alongside memories and evocative prose. I’ve also learned a thing or two and feel moved to a degree by the argument.
However, from a readers point of view it is here that I was let down. The normal beauty and engaging narrative I find in Winton’s fiction was diluted with his intention to make a point. The arguments, not particularly well made, are a construction that erodes the quality of Winton’s prose. To borrow a relevant metaphor, the agenda we see unfolding throughout the book corrupts the unspoilt fictional landscape we are so used to exploring with Winton.
For me Winton is a literary giant of fiction, but he’s not an essayist.
I had to get that comment out first, as Island Home is not a Tim Winton novel/story and it is not, for me, comparable to the Tim Winton I love to read.
Island Home is part story telling, part memoir and part argument. I have a great deal of appreciation for the first two aspects but not much for the last.
Throughout the text you will find Winton’s usual brilliant writing style with its rich relational subjects and beautiful prose. Some of the stories I just loved and they stand by themselves as great stories. I loved also his memoirs, particularly about the development of his writing style and career.
But this is more than a memoir and more than a story – Winton is writing to make a point. The point is about our wonderful land, its natural beauty and the way that natural environment has been plundered and disrespected by our colonial forebears and successive governments. Notably, he also talks about many of the champions of the land, and this is very informative and inspiring. I find no personal disagreement with the thrust of Winton’s argument, which he tries to weave alongside memories and evocative prose. I’ve also learned a thing or two and feel moved to a degree by the argument.
However, from a readers point of view it is here that I was let down. The normal beauty and engaging narrative I find in Winton’s fiction was diluted with his intention to make a point. The arguments, not particularly well made, are a construction that erodes the quality of Winton’s prose. To borrow a relevant metaphor, the agenda we see unfolding throughout the book corrupts the unspoilt fictional landscape we are so used to exploring with Winton.
For me Winton is a literary giant of fiction, but he’s not an essayist.
June 5, 2017
I know this is called a landscape memoir but golly it is boring. I really enjoyed the chapters that explored Winton's life but really struggled with the chapters that were simple long winded explanations of the land. Admittedly it was beautifully written and filled with lyrical imagery, but I found it hard to keep reading. Definitely for fans only.
August 30, 2022
3.5 stars. An interesting collection of essays about the Australian landscape and culture. He writes about how he became more aware of the Australian environment, the coast and land. He mostly describes the places he has lived in Western Australia.
As an Australian and Tim Winton fan, I found this book an interesting and reflective reading experience. The reader gains an idea of Winton’s influences and the people who shaped his writing.
This book was first published in 2015.
As an Australian and Tim Winton fan, I found this book an interesting and reflective reading experience. The reader gains an idea of Winton’s influences and the people who shaped his writing.
This book was first published in 2015.
December 4, 2025
I was forced to read this due to my personal thirst for academic success and perhaps my praise kink. It was cool...but also fell like I was invading someone's privacy as it reads too much like a diary. OH...BUT THE PATTERN READING PART SLAPPED.
April 28, 2017
Island Home – implies many things, but for Winton, it does imply isolation. His experiences as a young writer trying to make his way are ugly - his descriptions of the disparaging comments from Eastern Stater editors and commentators wearing 15 shades of black is hilarious. But he is right. It is easy to forget that Western Australia was very isolated from the rest of southern Australia and treated as an outpost equal to Papua New Guinea or Darwin. Prior to the early 1960s, the two modes of travel to visit WA was either train or ship; the connecting road wouldn’t be built till 1962, and not fully sealed till 1974. Winton discusses that he wanted to create an exclusive WA voice – telling WA stories, full of WA place names and objects, and style and people. He felt that our literature up to that point was largely eastern-centric; of course he is quite correct, prior to him we had very few WA big name writers, excluding Elizabeth Jolley and Randolph Stow. Interestingly, Stow gets a look in but not Jolley. He might have been annoyed with her series of English set novels.
This memoir cum essay is about island isolation and the advantages and disadvantages it brings. Winton covers many aspects of his life – feeding you just enough of his personal life to keep you interested and informed, but not enough to tell you much. It is important to note that Winton doesn’t do promotion tours nor interviews. In this aspect, the book is very tightly controlled; the brilliance is in the way Winton delivers it, such that you never feel like you are constrained. So, what happens when you experience extreme isolation? Well, you start developing endemism in all aspects – you play with ideas be it speciation of organisms, or culture, or sense of self. It can also make you insular and not open to change. The examples of these in WA are entertaining and also distressing. The description of the Albany water front when it had a full complement of toxic industries and the town’s attitudes is compelling and the basis for an early novel.
The big life changing event to Winton was the few years he lived in Albany on the south coast. He has little love for the school years, but the scenery and his discovery of surfing would have a profound impact. The WA south coast is the most common setting of his books, with the sea always playing a prominent place. Throughout the book he will return to this.
The other big event was Vince Seventy’s Walkabout – one of the very 1st natural history programmes aired on Australian TV. Seventy was one of the 1st prominent environmental activists and was pivotal to the saving of the Great Barrier Reef’s destruction in the late 1960s. Winton is now the public face of a number of environmental groups. He freely admits he is a fraud in that it is the scientists behind the scenes that do the work & he is just a pretty face to get public support. Here is where the book piqued my interest. Normally, someone like Winton bangs on about yet another pretty mammal, but instead he turns to the amazingly diverse flora of the southern coast line of WA. Once again, back to that hobby horse of his loved south coast, but also adding contemporary botanists, and the once neglected Georgina Molloy into the story. It is a nice & original touch.
He also discussed his final favourite topic – the indigenous peoples of Australia. He talks about what he knows: the people of the Western Kimberley. He describes their plight in loss of lands, and culture and connection, but also the significance of “returning to country”. He does this is a moving and sensitive way, which just highlights the strength of his writing skills.
This is a short read and very emotive – it will make you laugh and it will make you pensive towards various contemporary issues in this country. If you have lived or know WA, then the memoir will resonate with many, but it also is for a much wider international audience, and no doubt will get more folks to see the spectacular natural history that is southern WA.
This memoir cum essay is about island isolation and the advantages and disadvantages it brings. Winton covers many aspects of his life – feeding you just enough of his personal life to keep you interested and informed, but not enough to tell you much. It is important to note that Winton doesn’t do promotion tours nor interviews. In this aspect, the book is very tightly controlled; the brilliance is in the way Winton delivers it, such that you never feel like you are constrained. So, what happens when you experience extreme isolation? Well, you start developing endemism in all aspects – you play with ideas be it speciation of organisms, or culture, or sense of self. It can also make you insular and not open to change. The examples of these in WA are entertaining and also distressing. The description of the Albany water front when it had a full complement of toxic industries and the town’s attitudes is compelling and the basis for an early novel.
The big life changing event to Winton was the few years he lived in Albany on the south coast. He has little love for the school years, but the scenery and his discovery of surfing would have a profound impact. The WA south coast is the most common setting of his books, with the sea always playing a prominent place. Throughout the book he will return to this.
The other big event was Vince Seventy’s Walkabout – one of the very 1st natural history programmes aired on Australian TV. Seventy was one of the 1st prominent environmental activists and was pivotal to the saving of the Great Barrier Reef’s destruction in the late 1960s. Winton is now the public face of a number of environmental groups. He freely admits he is a fraud in that it is the scientists behind the scenes that do the work & he is just a pretty face to get public support. Here is where the book piqued my interest. Normally, someone like Winton bangs on about yet another pretty mammal, but instead he turns to the amazingly diverse flora of the southern coast line of WA. Once again, back to that hobby horse of his loved south coast, but also adding contemporary botanists, and the once neglected Georgina Molloy into the story. It is a nice & original touch.
He also discussed his final favourite topic – the indigenous peoples of Australia. He talks about what he knows: the people of the Western Kimberley. He describes their plight in loss of lands, and culture and connection, but also the significance of “returning to country”. He does this is a moving and sensitive way, which just highlights the strength of his writing skills.
This is a short read and very emotive – it will make you laugh and it will make you pensive towards various contemporary issues in this country. If you have lived or know WA, then the memoir will resonate with many, but it also is for a much wider international audience, and no doubt will get more folks to see the spectacular natural history that is southern WA.
December 26, 2015
Just finished! How powerful is Tim Winton as writer! He really stirs your conscience about your place, your history and the future. Can't wait for others to read and begin conversations.
November 14, 2018
I love Tim Winton's fiction and I liked the very personal bits of this book where he talks about his own life. However mostly he writes about nature and landscape here which didn't have quite the same appeal.
November 5, 2016
One of the casualties of living as a non-indigenous Australian under a government which tortures refugees, in a land which was stolen without treaty, is a confusion over how to process a love of Country, without implying a nationalist pride, or denying the complex realities over land ownership. Winton's book is a revelation because it starts at the outset by laying claim to Australianess - an identity shaped and molded by this large, flat, single-tectonic-plate Island continent.
I have long since accepted the importance of 'biophilia' to who I am. I live surrounded by native trees, I travel as often as I can afford (and we drive slowly, with breaks Mr Winton!) and getting into the local ecosystem is a priority when arriving. Australia is not only unusually large and flat, it has an unusually delicately balanced ecosystem, a system of many keystone species. This sense of balance, of each entity playing a role that is equal to the next, all crucial, all interdependent, is part of what I think returning to bush returns us too. Winton talks in the book of the majesty, the overarching nature of, well, nature. But it is also the importance of the small, the ants and the termites, the constant sense of activity and maintenance, which reminds us that we are part of something bigger, something that includes us but is much larger than we are.
I read this in WA, while being startled by the differences in an eco-system which was broadly similar to the East Coast. The way everything looks familiar and yet tweaked slightly. The flowers, oh my gosh, the flowers. I began to understand a little the sense of dislocation, the otherness, that my friends from WA express occasionally.
Much of the book is concerned with issues of environmental sustainability. The specifics are important, but it is the broader sense of the book which rang home the most powerfully for me: if we can accept that this land creates who we are, then perhaps we can start to ask what becomes of us if we destroy it. And perhaps we might want to listen to those who sing it.
I have long since accepted the importance of 'biophilia' to who I am. I live surrounded by native trees, I travel as often as I can afford (and we drive slowly, with breaks Mr Winton!) and getting into the local ecosystem is a priority when arriving. Australia is not only unusually large and flat, it has an unusually delicately balanced ecosystem, a system of many keystone species. This sense of balance, of each entity playing a role that is equal to the next, all crucial, all interdependent, is part of what I think returning to bush returns us too. Winton talks in the book of the majesty, the overarching nature of, well, nature. But it is also the importance of the small, the ants and the termites, the constant sense of activity and maintenance, which reminds us that we are part of something bigger, something that includes us but is much larger than we are.
I read this in WA, while being startled by the differences in an eco-system which was broadly similar to the East Coast. The way everything looks familiar and yet tweaked slightly. The flowers, oh my gosh, the flowers. I began to understand a little the sense of dislocation, the otherness, that my friends from WA express occasionally.
Much of the book is concerned with issues of environmental sustainability. The specifics are important, but it is the broader sense of the book which rang home the most powerfully for me: if we can accept that this land creates who we are, then perhaps we can start to ask what becomes of us if we destroy it. And perhaps we might want to listen to those who sing it.
July 2, 2018
I loved the first chapter of this book, but the longer it went on the less I enjoyed it. I have loved Tim Winton's novels, every one I've read (except maybe The Riders), but this left me a bit cold. I think it was his rather didactic and superior tone about the issues that matter to him, combined with a tendency to put opposing views in the worst possible light. Still, it was full of Winton's masterful and beautiful turns of phrase, and that was wonderful.
October 6, 2015
Tim Winton is always a master of words, and he sums up in this 'memoir' what it means to be an Australian, and how we feel about the land we live in. There are some startlingly beautiful passages in here, especially the segment on being outback and how terrifying the sky can seem at night when there is nothing between you and the stars.
November 18, 2016
He's a living national treasure. In his fiction Tim Winton takes the pulse of what has and does make us tick as Australians, particularly those of us who grew up on our nation's great littoral and away from the mega-cities. He connects us to the sea – and to where the bush or desert meets the sea. His books, like the television series such as the iconic 'SeaChange' and these days '800 Words', despite the latter being set in NZ, help nurture the urge to make our own lives more elemental, less digitalised; less rapacious. Perhaps just plain simpler – maybe somewhat the way it used to be.
Of course 'Cloudstreet' has been the golden egg for him – and for many Australians it is the best book written in this country. It's a classic, but if this scribe had just one of his to choose from to snuggle up to on a desert island with it would be 'The Riders' – perhaps with 'Dirt Music' in reserve. But no less important has been his fare for younger folk. His 'Lockie Leonard' trilogy hit a nerve for a generation, linked in with its own televsion series. The lad going scumbusting was a favourite staple of mine in the classroom for years. 'Blueback' is another treasure.
As Malcolm Knox, no slouch in the wordsmithery department himself, has commented on Winton that he '...has been shy about revealing himself through the clearer glass of non-fiction writing.' This has changed, though, in recent times. Long content to pass on certain messages through the words of his fictional characters, he first started to expose himself with the fight to save Nigaloo Reef. Then, last year, TW peeped further above the parapet with 'Island Home'. And in 2016 went bravely over the top with 'The Boy Behind the Curtain' – so in his later years the shyness has dissipated.
'Island Home' was much about the landscape and its effect on the mind. With the latest publication, it is more about the mind itself – revealing what, indeed, makes him tick. But, of course, I, as a long time reader, thought I had a fair handle on that anyway. I was wrong. We all know of Winton's love of the briny, particularly surfing, that, for some, can take the form of a religion. Then there's his impressive 'get' of our indigenous people's connection with country. In both of these non-fiction tomes there's passion expressed on the big issues, developed through his personal history. He may be slow to rouse, but in the end, he's pulling no punches. He knows the way it has to go – all of us do if we have a brain to bless ourselves with. But with the likes of Abbott – as well as Abbott-lite in Turnbull - we'll never get there. In the bigger picture, throwing Trump into the mix, it would seem the task is pretty hopeless. Knowing doesn't develop the collective will, but Tim W's writing in both of these outings sure gives encouragement to make headway.
The major aspect of the author's make-up I didn't know was his connection to evangelical religion. When Winton was a kid his father, a motor cycle cop, had a near death experience when he came off his bike. A pall came down on young Tim's household as his dad battled to recover from his ordeal. One of his carers was deeply into religion and his father was converted. Back in the day this resulted in the whole family becoming church-goers. Most of us are formed by home upbringing and school as the power of organised religion wanes. For Tim it seems it was family and the Bible. 'Even if the Australian society of my childhood was militarily irreligious, the church was my first and most formative culture. It was, in effect, the village I was raised in, and in many senses this meant I grew up in a counter culture, although it was the sort in which beads, feathered hats and granny glasses were worn without the sense of performance that arrived with the hippies.'
His family became happy-clappers, joining the Church of Christ, an Americam import. All this ran kilter to my impressions of Winton, but undoubtedly it had a profound impact. In the tale 'Twice on Sundays', from 'A Boy Behind the Curtain', even though some of what occurred to him as a member of this church's congregation seems a tad spooky, it was here, rather than at school, that he was exposed to story. And we, as his readers, excusing the pun, thank heavens that he did.
Much in both books has seen the light of day in stand-alone airings for newspapers and journals, but there is mint new writing as well. In 'TBBTC's' 'Stones for Bread' we have an example of his passion as expressed back in March of 2015 for the Fairfax Press. Here we have Winton using his pen to scribe his disappointment at our politician's appalling treatment – anti-Christian treatment – of those refugees asking our country to keep them safe. With this article his whole being is exposed for pot-shots to be aimed from the far right and our odious shock jocks – but, of course, there's safety in numbers, to an extent. His is by no means a lone voice decrying our leaders' hypocrisy, on many fronts, in placing the innocents into such dire situations on off shore islands.
As one would expect, there's some lovely stuff in 'Island Home: A Landscape Memoir'. The image on the cover and endpapers, with their immense beach and tiny human figures, gives our first indication of how this writer views the vastness of a country, a vastness that isn't entirely confined to the Outback alone. There are a humongous number of kilometres of almost untouched coastline. Early on here he remarks on how he found the difference from his homeland to what he found on his European adventurings. Visiting that continent he struggled with scale, in that '...the dimensions of physical space seemed compressed. The looming physical pressure of mountains cut me off from the horizon. I'd not lived with that kind of spatial curtain before...For a West Australian like me, whose default setting is in diametric opposition, and for whom space is the impinging force, the effect is claustrophobic. I think I was constantly and instinctively searching for distances that were unavailable, measuring space and coming up short.'
I loved the essay 'Barefoot and Unhurried'. Here Tim writes of the pleasures of grandfatherhood – of how he's watching his offsprings' children '...taking the world in through their skin...Being short and powerless kids see the world low down and close up...In childhood you own little more than your secret places, the thoughts in your head...' and so on. Magic stuff – stuff that I see in my own precious granddaughter and will see in the one on the way. He went on to recount his own childhood of freedoms where there was, '...strange comfort in the hiss of the stick I trailed in the dirt all afternoon, and in the whispery footfalls on the empty beach.' That bit got to me. What got to Delia Falconer, in her review of 'Island Home', was when Winton went exploring the cliffs facing Ningaloo and he happened on a cave. He entered and discovered it seemed to be the place the local kangaroos came to die, their carcasses then mummified by the dry desert air. These were, he writes, '...still themselves, still beautiful...like an ancient priestly caste keeping vigil even in death.'
For a while our four times Miles Franklin winner-to-be lived in Albany in the era when Australia's last whaling station was in operation. As a callow kid he loved going down to where the flensing yards were located to watch the tourists, on their viewing platforms, turn green and retch at the smell and sights before them as the behemoths from the deep were disemboweled. 'This was what the town was built on – a century and a half of seizing, killing, breaking and boiling.' That kid went on to write 'Blueback'. He tells of the men, in 'Corner of the Eye', that helped shape the values he holds today in regards the environment. They came to him, via television, into his family lounge room. There were Harry Potter, Vincent Serventy and dare I say it, Rolf Harris, in 'Rolf's Walkabout'.
Another strong impression was made on his mind by a recluse. This story is told in 'Waychinicup', relating to an area now a national park. Frank was '… a squatter in search of peace and quiet.' and the future Booker Prize double nominee became '… a puppy like nuisance intruding on the space of a bloke who treasured his privacy.' Frank, with his wheelbarrow, used for carting goods to his remote location, became the inspiration for the old hermit a lost couple encounters in his tale 'Wilderness', featured in his first short story collection, 'Scission', from 1985. Several yarns, the now 56 year old, relates from his childhood in the two books under review here, such as when he and his father came across an accident victim during his youth, were inspiration for tales in this collection.
With 'Scission' one can see that, at this early stage, his writing is not the powerful beast it becomes. And not all his stories work – for this reader anyhow. To me he was fine in the core, but endings were problematical. Perhaps he learnt that he'd be more at home in the longer form – he certainly would be once he prised the remarkable 'Cloudstreet' out of himself. Still, there was much joy to be had in 'Scission' with tales such as 'A Blow, a Kiss', 'Thomas Awkner Floats' and 'Neighbours'. In these we can sense the future.
'When I was a kid I liked to stand at the window with a rifle and aim it at people.' This was the unsettling opening sentence to 'The Boy Behind the Curtain'. We're sucked in from the get-go. For Winton, as for me, guns were a part of life as a child in our shared era. We were easy around them. My father taught me the fundamentals and the dangers – and in no uncertain terms were we to not deviate from the guidelines he laid down for their use. We knew where the ammo was kept – and there it would stay, unless we were in his company to discharge it. For our country Port Arthur changed everything, but I had long before distanced myself from any form of gun culture. But as a kid it was fun to imagine – even if Winton took it a little further.
And in another story I found out what a boodie is. Reading about this animal here I felt a bit like Martin Clunes who came to Tassie as part of his documentary series, 'The Islands of Australia', discovering, as well as actually holding, an animal he'd never heard of – our quoll. I doubt I'll ever handle a boodie. Winton had never heard of the creature either until he was outback and a station leaseholder, John Underwood, introduced him to the animals' deserted burrows. John explained to Tim that the little creatures were extinct on the mainland since the 1960s, but still could be found on a couple of isolated islands in Shark Bay. Tim was explained to that the boodie was a relative of the woylie??? It became clearer for Tim when he heard they were types of bettongs. Tim doubted he would ever get to see one. Slowly, carefully the boodie is now being introduced back into highly protected areas on the mainland. It was a delight to read of the author, along with Tim Flannery and Luc Longley, of basketball fame, helping to introduce boodies to their new surrounds. So Tim got to handle a boodie.
In 'The Boy behind the Curtain' there's so much to give pleasure. His paean to Elizabeth Jolley, an early mentor, is very engaging. He also takes us into the arguments concerning sharks' rights, when it comes to the shallows, and he examines his own role, when he first put his head above the parapet, in 'The Battle for Nigaloo Reef'.
'We rise to a challenge and set a course. We take a decision. You put your mind to something. Just deciding to do so it gets you half way there. Daring to try.' This quote is from Winton's 2013 novel 'Eyrie'. The legend has been a published wordwrangler since 1981 and as with the quote, he has dared himself in so many ways, when he's been at the crossroads during his career. He dared to write at so young an age, dared himself to get involved in causes that were right and he dared to open himself up to scrutiny in 'Island Home' and 'The Boy Behind the Curtain'. You can keep the reader at arm's length with fiction, but now we know much more about the man, thanks to these two publications. What will he dare to do next I wonder? We wait in anticipation.
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