Land’s Edge: A Coastal Memoir by Tim Winton

I am a Tim Winton fan, and have read most of his books; and was delighted to receive this small, and beautifully presented little book which is a mixture of memoir and observation on one of his favourite subjects: the sea.

The sea features heavily in all his novels, particularly in his more recent books and stories: Breath, The Turning, and Dirt Music. More than just a context, the sea often symbolises risk, change, and a place where people discover their true identity.

In this memoir, Winton traces his love affair with the sea, and articulates what it means for him, and perhaps for all Australians. The idea of “land’s edge” is significant. Beyond the beach is the vast unknown, a place of fear and awe and discovery.

Winton quotes WJ Darkin:

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.

Winton has a reverence for the ocean, partly because he has almost drowned twice, partly because he has swum with whale sharks, partly because he also has a respect for the Creator:

...I do think that everything that lives is holy and somehow integrated; and on cloudy days I suspect that these phenomena and the hundreds of tiny, modest versions no one hears about, are an ocean, an earth, a Creator, something shaking us by the collar, demanding our attention, our fear, our vigilance, our respect, our help.

In the memoir sections he alludes to church on Sundays, and there is always a sense of the transcendence that infuses and excites him. He describes the almost “religious hush” that descends on a crowd when the first dolphins break the surface at Monkey Mia.

A theme that took central place in Breath, was the idea of the sea as the place where Australian teenage boys, in particular, work out their identity, test their manhood. He writes about his own experience of that:

The sea got me through adolescence, pure and simple... Surfing and diving became a necessary escape. They burned off dangerous energy and gave me a great release from the entanglements of school, family, the agonies of love and loyalty... Feeling immortal, I cheated death all the time, diving deeper and deeper, taking risks in caves at the end of my breath limit...

The coast was where Winton first began to read, in the eclectic library of his Aunt and Uncle who owned the seaside house where his family holidayed. It was where the dream of writing began. In his exploration of the coastline and conversations with hermits, his first book was born.

He describes himself as a ‘littoralist’ - “someone who picks over things at the edges” - both as a beachcomber and a writer:

Gifts and signs wash ashore here on the hard white beach, and I stoop... and pick them up and hold them to the light.

I was disappointed to discover that this book was a re-release, initially published in 1993 as a “coffee table book”, without any updating from Winton. He explained that it still summed up his thoughts of the coast. There are however, eight stunning new photographs by photographic artist Narelle Autio, which match the prose.

Perhaps one of the key messages from Winton, and one of the few times he will use his celebrity status, is the need to appreciate and conserve our coastal heritage:

Because after the last open coast of Australia is tamed, polluted and overfished, what’s left except nostalgia and the desert at our backs?