Tim Winton - Sharks and Surfboards
I can't say that I've ever read any of Tim Winton work - really it was the title of his talk that drew me to attend this event. Sharks as well as the themes surrounding them are interesting, linking this with surfboards is just as interesting. The great white Literature Tent, full of people fanning themselves from the heat, was reminiscent of a Bible Belt preaching tent. On the flipside, this mostly unbearable heat was probably quite homely for Australian born and raised Tim - as when entering the tent, he joked about not being use to heat like this - although in England alone I'm sure.
Tim took to the stage and read the opening passage from his autobiography The Boy Behind The Curtain - Notes from an Australian Life. "When I was a kid I liked to stand at the window with a rifle and aim it at people. They had no idea I was lurking there - thirteen years old, armed and watchful - and that was the best part of it." This was an eye opening initiation to who Tim was a young boy and the further questions and answers built up a greatly detailed picture of Tim Winton, boy to man along with a few stories of his lifetime milestones that shaped him as well as influencing his written work and most recently his autobiography. Although modest, even as a child entering maturity - pushing at his surrounding boundaries as he grew - he understood the power held with that rifle and the effects as well as responsibilities of his actions - while lurking at a window and hunting with his family, squeezing the trigger was something unfathomable. He grew up with a father in the police department, which clearly lead him to have a different perspective on general sociology that any normal person might not consider. Life is truly precious, something from the sounds of it that you quickly realise when smelling blood on your father returning home from work and a fatal traffic collision. "Life is stranger then we imagine, or perhaps we can imagine - You get T-boned, or come home one day to find out your marriage is over, or with a diagnosis you didn't expect, life is a train wreck".
Hearing about Tim's life and works was inspiring, he's a lovely combination of chilled and deep, like the seascapes that seem to inspire him so. Hearing about his novel Cloudstreet, a narrative based on interactions his father had linking to the Nedlands Monster (Eric Edgar Cooke) a Perth serial killer, further piqued my interest in Tim and all his words verbalised and penned. The title topic of sharks and surfboards inevitably came up, as he discussed "Even though they look like monsters, sharks have as many ways to be good and bad as humans do", the beautiful dangers of sharks, the ocean and humanity alike are things Tim seems all to familiar with. "We still, despite what we tell ourselves, are at the mercy of nature." He spoke of some of his plays and also adaptation of novels into amazing theatrical productions, most recently a feature film called Breath which will be released soon. After going in blind about Tim and his work, I left with a list of books I wanted to read, I'll be starting with Dirt Music - as sadly Cloudstreet wasn't available on the book stall - and I'm sure it won't be my last experience of Tim Winton.
