Why Tim Winton is happy he never moved to Melbourne

Novelist Tim Winton has won the country’s most prestigious book industry award, for his lifetime of distinguished and outstanding service to publishing and literary culture – and says staying home in Western Australia had everything to do with it.

Presented by the Australian Book Industry Awards, the Lloyd O’Neil Award’s previous winners include authors Ruth Park, Thomas Keneally, Peter Carey, David Malouf, Di Morrisey, Helen Garner, and booksellers such as Ann Poublon, who opened the first three Dymocks franchises in WA, Suzy Wilson of Queensland’s Riverbend Books, and Readings managing director Mark Rubbo.

Tim Winton is touring the country this week.Credit: Violeta J Brosig, Blue Media Exmouth

Winton spoke to this masthead from Exmouth ahead of a special preview launch screening Monday night of Ningaloo Nyinggulu, the three-part documentary he wrote and executive-produced, which will air on the ABC this month.

The novelist with more than 40 years in the business and 29 books to his name recalled moments of activism from resisting pressure to move out of his home state in the 1990s, to campaigning on existential issues for the book industry throughout the 2000s.

“I’m not the most enthusiastic festival-appearer, but I try to do my bit where I can,” he said with characteristic de-emphasis.

Winton grew up in a world of internationally acclaimed authors such as the Nobel prize-winning Patrick White and Christina Stead routinely not being edited or published in Australia.

Artists felt pressure to get on a ship to London or New York, where “real publishing was happening”.

“Young people were getting the greatest Australian literature as a colonial export material … the cultural cringe was just so strong,” he said.

He said as he began writing in the late 1970s, in his late teens, it was following an Australian cultural renaissance seeded by new funding and focus from the Whitlam government.

This brought the production of films such as Stork, Picnic at Hanging Rock and Breaker Morant, “unapologetically Australian” works in which “people spoke in their own accents.”

Despite this, the perception an Australian literary novelist was a “rolling oxymoron” persisted into the 1990s.

Tim Winton submission to the Productivity Commission, 2016

I respectfully and wearily refer you to my submission of 2009, attached. I understand that neither this letter nor my previous submission may be treated as persuasive evidence, given the linguistic and ideological barriers separating us, but perhaps they will be of some historical interest to future scholars should your calamitous recommendations be adopted by Government.

“You’d be made to go and have drinks and functions with literary editors and hobnob in London and you’d still be getting jokes,” he said.

“You just had to smile and your only revenge is to do good.”

He said his first political act as an artist was staying home.

“The assumption was I lived on the wrong side of the wrong country and the wrong hemisphere if I wanted to be a serious writer, and person,” he said.

“The cultural cringe abated but the continental cringe hadn’t.”

Winton received constant questioning about when he would be “buying a black skivvy and trading in the double pluggers” to move to Sydney or Melbourne.

And holding out had not always been a simple choice, especially when a long-distance call “cost you real money”.

“Writing novels in my parents’ back shed in Scarborough wallpapered with rejection slips, I could pick the sound of the postie coming streets away and my body would get all tense,” he said.

“Sometimes it was a long time between drinks. Did I have my doubts? Of course I did. But I refused to surrender to what was put as cultural common sense.”

Tim Winton has published 29 books in a career spanning more than 40 years.

He also resisted pressure to give up “territorial copyright”, and insist that his books remain written, typeset, printed and sold at home, because it “felt right”, even when it cost him financially.

“Those of us who held out for territorial copyright were trying to hold on to the integrity of the book industry ecosystem,” Winton said.

“[Not return] us to a colonial outpost where Australian writers would be published overseas and have their work exported to their home country, which is really perverse and not something a French author would contemplate.”

Then came the advent of e-books, with Winton among a cohort campaigning to raise author e-book royalties to a fair rate.

“We didn’t want to be like the music industry utterly decimated by this model where you get paid nothing,” he said.

Parallel importation was another battle he was involved in as Australia’s productivity Commission attempted to tinker with the industry yet again.

He was “underwater most of the time” filming Ningaloo Nyinggulu while the Australian government was formulating its long awaited cultural policy, released in January, which will mean authors are finally compensated for audio and e-book loans from public libraries, but welcomed the announcement.

“Let’s face it, after the previous government, this is at least a government that has a cultural policy and that’s progress,” he said.

Does he regret not moving to Melbourne, or indeed New York? And has a life of activism, both industrial and environmental, been worth it?

“Some of the most provincial and parochial people I’ve ever met have been from those London and New York centres,” Winton said.

“And I don’t think now people are asking Craig Silvey or Claire Coleman when they’re moving to Sydney. Things have changed. They’re still tough, it’s still an odd gig to be embarking on, but … how different it is, from when I was growing up.

“And when you decide not to be involved in politics, even that is a political decision.

“Every part of your life, you have agency.”

He urged people to use that agency to support Australian publications.

“These are the people pushing our culture forward,” he said.

“If it was about the money they’d all be gone and you’d be reading exclusively American and English books.”

“Publishing and bookselling – and writing – are part of a living ecosystem and we should be proud of it.

“The writing community are writing for love more than money – if it was about the money they’d all be gone and you’d be reading exclusively American and English books. So support that local community bookstore just as you support any other community store – they care and they make a difference.”

The Australian Publisher’s Association said in a statement that Winton’s writing had seeped into our collective consciousness.

“[It] is reflected in conversations from the arts and education, to the environment and marine conservation, to community and political advocacy,” it said.

“Winton is an impressive and deserving recipient of this award.”

Winton will tour this week to Fremantle (sold out), Castlemaine, Kyneton, Sydney Writers Festival and Brisbane Writers Festival. Details here.

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