Tim Winton returns to Cloudstreet while Holly Ringland pines for the 90s

Oh, geez, I haven't read this for a long time.

[clears throat] [guitar music] Will you look at us by the river? The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy, briny sunshine, skylarkin' and shyrkin' about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living.

Yachts run before an unfelt gust with bag-necked pelicans riding above them, the city their twitching backdrop, all blocks and points of mirror light down to the water's edge.

That's the start of Cloudstreet, a story of two working-class families, the Pickles and the Lambs, thrown together by the shifty shadow of fate to live together at number one Cloudstreet.

Tim Winton published Cloudstreet in 1991.

It won him his second Miles Franklin Award, and seemingly overnight, the book became a beloved Australian classic.

Tim Winton, hello.

Hello.

Uh, you've been writing books for more than 40 years.

You know, you've got 12 novels to your name.

What place does Cloudstreet have in your heart?

Oh, I don't, I don't have favorites.

I mean, it's a bit like being a parent, you know? If you did have a favorite, you wouldn't own up, 'cause it's bad parenting.

But the, the place that Cloudstreet does have is, um, it's the, it's the book that dug us out of the poo.

It was a book, in a way, about precarity, but it was the book that sort of, um, s- you know, spared us the precarious situation that we were in, um, at the time.

So yeah, it just came along at the right time for us.

I had s- three little kids and, um, [chuckles] no money, and nobody expected the book to do what it did, least of all us.

And somehow it sort of just turned into something, and I've, I've still never...

I still can't figure out why.

So you were a young man, I think you were in your early 20s when you started writing Cloudstreet.

You still had the long hair.

I, I'd just love to know more about the, the man you were when you were writing this, where you were at in your career, how you felt about things.

Oh, look, I was, I was young and full of piss and vinegar, the way you are in your 20s.

I'd, I'd been doing it for a long time already because I'd started so young.

I mean, I was, I was writing in my teens and publishing in my teens.