John Yorke delves into Tim Winton’s beloved novel, Cloudstreet, published in 1991.

Set in a suburb of Perth in Western Australia, the novel spans the period from the end of the Second World War until the mid 1960s and made the young Winton, who wrote the book in his 20s, both a literary and popular phenomenon in his own country. It tells the story of two large white working class families – the Pickles and the Lambs - who experience separate catastrophes, and end up moving to the city to share a great, breathing, ramshackle house, No.1 Cloudstreet.

The novel was, and still is, one of the most beloved and popular Australian novels ever written but, in this second episode about Cloudstreet, John Yorke explores some of the controversy that has arisen in more recent years.

Many of those who love and admire the book for its true and loving depiction of white working class life - warts and all - do now also have reservations about the sheer absence of well-rounded indigenous characters in the book. Aboriginal characters are depicted as ‘no nation’ and solely ‘noble’, never more than angels and ghosts. There is one recurring aboriginal figure in Cloudstreet who Winton has since described as being ‘the conscience of the nation’.

In this episode, we hear Winton himself remarking that the way he depicts aboriginality in the book was ‘naïve’ and that he has since learned much more about indigenous culture. One of Australia’s most celebrated writers Kim Scott, who is the first indigenous writer to have won the prestigious Australian prize, the Miles Franklin award, shares his thoughts about Cloudstreet in this episode. He says "I do remember being struck by the (recurring) aboriginal character as a lamppost... and one can slam novelists for that, but I think it’s within the infrastructure of what literature and Australia allowed Tim, so perhaps it’s a tribute to him that here is an absence, here’s something that (Winton is saying) I can’t articulate but needs to be in the mix”.

John concludes that perhaps, in Cloudstreet , Tim Winton found a way - at a time when dialogues about the relationship between indigenous nations and white Australia were in their infancy - to show us how white Australians lived their lives alongside indigenous people but pretended they, and the underlying reality of pain and violence done to them, were invisible.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for thirty years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday/Saturday Drama series. From EastEnders to the Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-

Contributors: Lyn McCredden, Professor Emerita, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia

Excerpt of Tim Winton from BBC World Book Club, 6th July 2017

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, 1991, Penguin Books, Australia.

Produced by Penny Boreham