Three Things I Love: Tim Winton on record shops and river rituals

Each month, WAtoday reaches out to the Perth community to discover three things people love most about our coastal capital. Today we feature Tim Winton, the author of more than 30 books. His work for both adults and children has been widely translated and adapted for film, television, stage and radio.

He has won Australia’s most prestigious literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award, a record four times. He has also won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award, twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, been named a Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia and been appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for service to literature, conservation and to environmental advocacy. He lives in Western Australia.

Tim Winton. Credit: Marco Del Grande

I love The Record Finder on High Street, Fremantle. I have to sneak past – I’m an easy victim. I have turntables, and it’s not far from New Edition bookshop. The guy has been in Freo longer than I have. He used to be in Essex Street before the extension of the Esplanade Hotel; it used to be an old hardware store. The last thing I bought there was a whole bunch of old prog-rock albums from the 1970s – Kansas, probably a Parliament album, all those embarrassing bands. I want to go in and buy the new King Stingray album. They’re a band from Arnhem Land – they sound like a surf guitar band. They’re terrific. Next time I’m in town I’ll go hunting for that.

I love the Sardine Jetty, Fremantle. It’s a well-fabled jetty in Freo where the Mendolia family used to base their sardine boats, and that boat shed was where the first production of Cloudstreet was staged; I guess it’s a bit sentimental.

But the main reason is one of my grandsons is completely obsessed by three particular charter boats that leave every morning. It’s a ritual. When I’m in town, we go there and wait for them to leave their berths, throw their lines and greet him – which they always do, they’re very nice – and for the passengers to get on board. He is 2½ but he knows the names of the boats and the crews. He watches them tie the ropes on, and we pick up rubbish and put it in the skip. He’s just obsessed. One of the deckies told him “if you do really badly at school, you can do a job like this”.

I love the river. There was never a time in my life it wasn’t a big presence. When I was an infant, we lived in Mosman Park. I have early photos of me as a baby with Mum by Keane Street. I must have swum in the river before the sea. And then right from boyhood to university, I was writing novels and short stories and still going prawning with Dad on the South Perth foreshore and Pelican Point, Crawley. Until the 1980s, we were still prawning and cooking our prawns on the beach … Mum and Dad would catch the tram with their prawning nets. Crawley itself didn’t mean anything to me because I went to [the Western Australian Institute of Technology, now Curtin University] – it was the river itself. Sitting on the beach, cooking prawns up in an old kero drum, being with family. I remember being a 20-year-old in Scarborough in Dad’s tin tool writing my first books as he boiled up prawns on his gas hob in the shed. I introduced my friends to it, my girlfriend – who has for the past 40 years been my wife – took her prawning and crabbing on it. It’s a painful thing, not being able to do that with my kids.

One of my favourite parts of the river is Harvey Beach, North Fremantle, next to the Water Police. When my kids were in school in Fremantle, in the afternoons after school, the sea breeze would be in and we’d jump off the jetty. There would be sea lions and dolphins – they still talk about that. My [children’s] book called The Deep, all the illustrations were based on that jetty at Harvey Beach. I take my grandkids there as well. The river is the lifeblood of the town in my novel Cloudstreet, and it’s kind of a lifeblood to me as well.

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