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'On childhood holidays to the beach the sun and surf kept Tim Winton outside in the mornings, in the water; the wind would drive him indoors in the afternoons, to books and reading. This ebb and flow of the day became a way of life.
'In this beautifully delicate memoir, Tim Winton writes about his obsession with what happens where the water meets the shore – about diving, dunes, beachcombing – and the sense of being on the precarious, wondrous edge of things that haunts his novels.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Brief extract published in the Age, 6 February 1995, Student Update, p.4.
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Dedication: For my family - and for those who know that a bad day's fishing is always better than a good day's work.
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Epigraph: We speak of course of that narrow strip of land over which the ocean waves and moon-powered tides are masters - that margin of territory that remains wild despite the proximity of cities or of land surfaces modified by industry. W. J. Dakin - Australian Seashores.
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Epigraph: Life's short-go surfing!- Bumper Sticker.
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'Land's Edge is Tim Winton's autobiographical meditation about this obsession with the coast and his respect for those who make their way on the margin between the desert and the sea.' - back-cover blurb.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also braille.
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
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Australian Literature, Risk, and the Global Climate Challenge
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Literature, Interpretation, Theory , vol. 26 no. 2 2015; (p. 85-105) 'Envision two scenarios, the one real the other imagined, both played out in Australia's southeast regions. In the imagined one, taken from George Turner's post-apocalyptic story “The Fittest,” the year is 2035 and parts of Melbourne are under water. The embattled city is divided into two camps, the Swill and the Sweet, who make up nine tenths and one tenth of the population, respectively. The Swill live in run-down tenement blocks in the low-lying southern and western areas of the city, which are at the mercy of rising sea levels caused by the catastrophic melting of the ice caps. The Sweet look down on the Swill, both literally and metaphorically, from their privileged vantage on the higher levels. The Swill, meanwhile, are left to fend for themselves in a daily and brutal struggle for survival: jobless, hungry, they are little more than predatory animals, a racially stigmatized underclass equivalent to Asia's barbarian hordes (Maxwell 20–21; Morgan). In the real one, the year is 2013 and parts of Tasmania have been transformed into an inferno. A devastating heatwave covering most of the southern and eastern parts of Australia has caused wildfires to spread, with its largest offshore island bearing the brunt of it. There are few deaths, but hundreds of people are displaced and irreparable damage is done to thousands of hectares of land and property. Media commentators return to that most obdurate if readily reversible of clichés, Australia as un/lucky country, linking the sins of commission (the perils of boom-and-bust economics) to those of omission (the price paid for ecological neglect).1 Spoiling as always for a fight, the British environmental campaigner George Monbiot sanctimoniously reminds his antipodean cousins that they burn twice as much carbon as his own countrymen, and that the history of Australia, framed as a “land of opportunity in which progress is limited only by the rate at which natural resources can be extracted,” doubles as a cautionary tale of what happens when “climate change clashes with a story of great cultural power.” Lest the moral of the story be unclear, Monbiot flourishingly underscores it: “Australia's new weather,” he says, “demands a new politics, a politics capable of responding to an existential threat.”' (Author's introduction) -
On Focuses on the Oceans' Ecology Reveled in Tim Winton's Main Literature Works
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Xihua University , no. 6 2014; (p. 53-55) 'Descriptions and focuses on ocean is a necessary part of the development of Australian literature, on which the world famous Australian writer Tim Winton is considered as one of the representatives. This thesis is mainly to introduce Tim Winton and his representative works which focus on the ocean; the author lists the most influential works of Tim Winton in order to present the common as well as the ecological concept of environmental protection reflected in his works.' (Publication abstract) -
Water
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Tim Winton : Critical Essays 2014; (p. 16-48)'In Dirt Music, remembering the time before a car crash took the lives of his brother Darkie, Darkie's wife Sal, and their two children, Bird and Bullet, Luther Fox recalls Bird's question : 'Lu, how come water lets you through it?' Bird is the one who saw God, and 'if anyone saw God it would likely be her. Bird's the nearest thing to an angelic being.' Bird's question suggests the function of water in Winton's novels. Water is everywhere in his writing, as people sail on it, dive into it, live on the edge of it. Clearly the sea and the river are vital aspects of the writer's own experience. But water is more than an omnipresent feature of his writing and his life, the oceanscape of his stories. It is something that 'lets you through'. It lets you through because it is the passage to a different state of being, sometimes in dream, sometimes in physical extremity, but always offers itself as the medium of transformation. When it lets you through - whether to escape to a different life, as a rite of passage to adulthood, to see the world in a new way or to discover the holiness of the earth or the wonder of the world, whether it is the baptismal water of redemption to an opening to a world of silence - and it is all these things- you become different.' (Author's introduction 16)
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'More Blokes, More Bloody Water!' : Tim Winton's Breath
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 26 no. 1 2012; (p. 13-17) 'In Tim Winton's Short Story, "Blood and Water," from the celebrated collection Minimum of Two (1987), the narrator experiences the fear and joy of birth, associating birth with the sacred and the ordeal baby Sam Nilsam has to undergo in order to heave his first breath and connect with the outside world through a flow of excrement, blood, water and suffering. Breath, Winton's most recently published novel and winner of the Miles Franklin Award, suggests some of these ideas in the depiction of a boy's discovery and experience of the world of surf and surfers on the Western Australian coast. The novel encapsulates some of Winton's major concerns: adolescence and manhood, place and the environment, life in Western Australia, identity, culture and politics. It raises questions about eco-philosophical nature, issues of identity and place, all the more as it was published in the same year as newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Apology to the Stolen Generations, a highly symbolic speech which marked the nation's desire to move forward, beyond colonization, urging Australians to build a new history resulting from both an ending (the recognition of past injustices) and a beginning (the desire to unite and embrace the multicultural ideal).' (Author's introduction)
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When the Last Leaf Falls
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Change - Conflict and Convergence : Austral-Asian Scenarios 2010; (p. 151-165) In this paper Glen Phillips shows 'how 221 years ago the British and European desire to create a new nation in Australia was partly motivated by a wish to escape the pollution and overcrowding of their nations' cities.' (p152)
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Non-Fiction Reviews
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 27 - 28 November 2010; (p. 25)
— Review of Land's Edge 1993 single work autobiography -
Tidal Pull of the West
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 4 December 2010; (p. 23)
— Review of Land's Edge 1993 single work autobiography ; Sand 2010 selected work poetry prose extract autobiography -
The Allurement of Place
1994
single work
review
— Appears in: Voices , Autumn vol. 4 no. 1 1994; (p. 118-122)
— Review of Lilies, Feathers and Frangipani 1993 single work diary ; Land's Edge 1993 single work autobiography ; Eating Dog : Travel Stories 1993 selected work short story -
Demon Lover
1994
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 26 February 1994; (p. 9)
— Review of Land's Edge 1993 single work autobiography ; The Picador Book of the Beach 1993 anthology short story -
Perception's Edge
1994
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 159 1994; (p. 17-18)
— Review of Land's Edge 1993 single work autobiography -
y
Storymen
Cambridge
Port Melbourne
:
Cambridge University Press
,
2009
Z1637200
2009
single work
life story
'What do the artistic works of acclaimed author Tim Winton and eminent Ngarinyin lawman Bungal (David) Mowaljarlai have in common?
'According to Hannah Rachel Bell they both reflect sacred relationship with the natural world, the biological imperative of a male rite of passage, an emergent urban tribalism, and the fundamental role of story in the transmission of cultural knowledge. In Bell's four decade friendship with Mowaljarlai, she had to confront the cultural assumptions that sculpted her way of seeing. The journey was life-changing.
'When she returned to teaching in 2001 Tim Winton's novels featured in the curriculum. She recognised an eerie familiarity and thought Winton must have been influenced by traditional elders to express such an 'indigenous' perspective. She wrote to him. This resulted in 4 years of correspondence and an excavation of converging world views - exposed through personal memoir, letters, paintings and conversations and culminating in Storymen.' (From the publisher's website.)
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The Littoral Truth
2010
single work
biography
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 18-19 December 2010; (p. 5-6) 'As Winton's Land's Edge is re-issued, Stephen Romei asks the author about life, family and writing for the screen and stage' (Editor's gloss). -
Winton's Siren Call to Protect the Seas
2010
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 18-19 December 2010; (p. 8) -
When the Last Leaf Falls
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Change - Conflict and Convergence : Austral-Asian Scenarios 2010; (p. 151-165) In this paper Glen Phillips shows 'how 221 years ago the British and European desire to create a new nation in Australia was partly motivated by a wish to escape the pollution and overcrowding of their nations' cities.' (p152) -
'More Blokes, More Bloody Water!' : Tim Winton's Breath
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 26 no. 1 2012; (p. 13-17) 'In Tim Winton's Short Story, "Blood and Water," from the celebrated collection Minimum of Two (1987), the narrator experiences the fear and joy of birth, associating birth with the sacred and the ordeal baby Sam Nilsam has to undergo in order to heave his first breath and connect with the outside world through a flow of excrement, blood, water and suffering. Breath, Winton's most recently published novel and winner of the Miles Franklin Award, suggests some of these ideas in the depiction of a boy's discovery and experience of the world of surf and surfers on the Western Australian coast. The novel encapsulates some of Winton's major concerns: adolescence and manhood, place and the environment, life in Western Australia, identity, culture and politics. It raises questions about eco-philosophical nature, issues of identity and place, all the more as it was published in the same year as newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Apology to the Stolen Generations, a highly symbolic speech which marked the nation's desire to move forward, beyond colonization, urging Australians to build a new history resulting from both an ending (the recognition of past injustices) and a beginning (the desire to unite and embrace the multicultural ideal).' (Author's introduction)
- Western Australia,
