The house of number one Cloud Street is a metaphor for Australia. In fact, all the characters are haunted by the past, even the house!

In Cloudstreet, Winton focuses on themes remanent of the Australian past, the colloquial speech, the endurance of the Aussie battler, mateship and larrikinism. One of the reasons for the success of Cloudstreet is that it recreates a feeling of loss for an era and a place for which many feel a great nostalgia. One thing is sure: through the use of symbolism and metaphors, Cloudstreet shed a light on what is repressed in the Australian unconscious. What both representations had in common, is that they largely skirted around Australian convict past and the incredible suffering inflicted on the Indigenous.ĭoes Winton pull back the Great Australian Silence blanket and expose the unresolved trauma of Australia’s past? Maybe, but only very partially. It was a clash between two representations of Australia, between a demonised city life and the innocence of the bush, between upper and lower classes, between settlers and working-class people. The controversy between the two poets, known as the “ Bulletin Debate”, lasted three years. Titled “In Defence of the Bush”, his poem finishes with the line “For the bush will never suit you, and you’ll never suit the bush.” He published his reply to Lawson’s poem in the Bulletin. On 9 July 1892, Henry Lawson published a poem in The Bulletin magazine entitled “Up The Country”.īeginning with the verse “I am back from up the country-very sorry that I went”, Lawson’s poem attacked the typical “romanticised” view of bush life that was prevailing at the time.īanjo Paterson, another iconic Australian “bush poet”, claimed that Lawson’s view of the bush life was full of doom and gloom.

Yet its poets created a national myth based on the people and landscapes of the bush – a myth still very much alive in today’s Australia. Though the actions of the story span over a period of twenty years, between 19, the novel’s background takes us back as early as the 1890s when Lester Lamb, one of the main characters, was born.Īt that time Lester was born, Australia was already a very urbanised society. Geraldton Panorama – Commons Wikimedia Loss of an era and a place Cloudstreet tells the story of two working-class families, during the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s.įorced to move to Perth from their bush town of Geraldton and Margaret River, due to tragedies and poverty, the Lambs and the Pickles end up sharing a decrepit weatherboard house on Cloud Street in Perth.

Tim winton cloud street