Tim Winton Biography

This is my Tim Winton Biography! I hope that you enjoy it!

Tim Winton has lived by the sea his whole life, inspiring his creative writing. He is a well-known Australian author. He wrote and published ‘An Open Swimmer at the age of 19, while at Curtin University of Technology, but he had already written 50 or so Short Stories. Tim’s career as a writer has been well established.

Born on August 4th 1960 in Karringup, Perth, he lived most of his childhood as a city boy. Twelve years later, the family of six moved to a sea-side community of Albany. Tim’s dad was a traffic cop, his mother was a telephone operator (before marriage), and Tim was the eldest of four, Hamish, Andrew and Sharyn. To top it all off, Grandma lived in a tent, in their backyard.
Tim recalls he was a model student, prior to moving, then to a rebel in his teenage years. His childhood sweetheart, who later became his wife, saw Tim write constantly during this time. These changes inspired Tim to start his writing career.

He loved going to the local beach and surfing all day. The tall tales and yarns around the dining table about the families ‘goings and comings’ through the ages.

Tim’s writing comes from his own ‘adventures', experiences and beliefs. “I just rock up to the desk in the morning and hope something shows up,” says Tim.
(http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s1227915.htm) He usually sticks to Fiction Short Stories and Novels, though occasionally Tim helps with a few Non-Fiction books. Tim believes that nature is apart of everybody and we need to look after it, even the mean and the ugly animals.

Writing about what is closest to Tim has given him a boost. Living by the sea makes Tim feel as though he has a second home, under the sea. There is freedom under the sea. Tim states, “Let’s face it, you do nine months as a free diver in your mother’s womb’ you belong to a planet that’s mostly water’ your body is mostly water. I don’t think there’s any mystery why we would be drawn to it (the sea) – I think there’s some kind of ancestral yearning. We all came from water. It feels like home.” (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/23/2962341).htm)

Cloudstreet is about two completely different rural families, torn apart by two different catastrophes, who flee to the city. They begin their lives from scratch, but there is a lot of sighing and muttering. The Lambs wait for a miracle from God to appear, it didn’t. The Pickleses wait for luck to come their way, it didn’t. So, these two families are living in a divided home that begins as a roof over their heads and then becomes a home for their hearts.

Dirt Music tells the story of a 40-year-old woman called Georgie Jutland. She has been kicked out of her own family, her nursing career destroyed and she is stranded in a small Western Australian fishing town. She is living with two kids, traumatized by their mother’s death, and the local fishermen. Georgie befriends the local poacher Luther Fox. Her life is filled with grief and regret. The journey of these two women who come to the road of recovery.
Tim Winton has won awards every year since 1981. Some of his works include, An open Swimmer, Shallows, That Eye The Sky, in the Winter Dark, Cloudstreet, The Riders, Blueback, Dirt Music, Breath. Many films, dramatizations and Adaptations have been done on Tim Winton’s many books.

Tim has also won the Miles Franklin Award in 1984, 1992, 2002 and 2009. A two time booker Prize nominee and was included in the Bulletin’s “100 Most Influential Australian” in 2006.
An achievement that Tim has rewarded himself with is becoming a member of the Author and Environmentalist committee. In 2004, the Ningaloo Reef had almost died when Tim Winton came along and saves it, turning it into a marine park. This is the storyline of Blueback.

Tim is very easy-going, willing to help others and has chosen a path that not many others have chosen, which makes Tim Winton a unique writer.