Few places on the planet are as scantily populated or have a landscape as diverse and dramatic as Western Australia, and the state’s oceans and outback have inspired writers and provided endless epic backdrops for many cinematic scenes. This is a place where the horizon is broad, the sky massive and the stars burn bright. Its immensity encourages the imagination to run wild. Narratives have permeated this land for millennia, growing in fantastic detail as they descended from the Dreamtime through generations of storytellers, relating tales around campfires. Today you can still hear those tales, told by people who have been custodians of this continent for more than 40,000 years. And you can also dig into a rich seam of modern stories, works of art by people such as Tim Winton, which convey a sense of what life is really like in this unique corner of the world.
A selection of books
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Books
Not many authors have captured a sense of place quite as completely as the multi award-winning writer Tim Winton has managed to do with his sunburnt, ocean-soaked oeuvre of books set, primarily, in his homeland of Western Australia. Winton was born in Perth, but spent many of his formative years in Albany, after the family moved to the South Pacific–facing town when he was 12.
Winton is a keen surfer and environmentalist, and ocean waves wash through his work, which submerges the reader into the sea and landscape of Western Australia and burns with a relentless shimmering heat that anyone who has spent time here will recognise. Every one of his 12 novels published to date are well worth seeking out, but as a literary backdrop to your time in WA, his 2001 novel Dirt Music is an excellent starter. Also dive into his debut work An Open Swimmer (1982) as well as Cloudstreet (1991) and Breath (2008).
The Shark Net by Robert Drewe is a beautifully written autobiographical account of a childhood spent in Perth’s suburbs during the 1950s, when the sunny city was cast into shade by a series of murders. Drewe has also authored numerous excellent stories and novels exploring Western Australian society and the formative role the landscape plays in shaping it, including The Savage Crows, A Cry in the Jungle Bar, The Bodysurfers, Fortune, The Bay of Contented Men, Our Sunshine, The Drowner, Grace and The Rip.
Other notable works by Western Australian writers include the award-winning 1937 novel The Young Desire It by Perth author Seaforth Mackenzie, who also wrote Dead Men Rising about the bloody Cowra breakout (when Japanese prisoners of war staged a dramatic escape from a World War II POW camp), an incident that Mackenzie experienced first-hand.
Western Australia has also produced the novelists Kim Scott – Lost (2006), That Deadman Dance (2010) and Taboo (2017) and Amanda Curtin – The Sinkings (2008) and Elemental (2013) – and the poet Tracy Ryan.
John Jarratt in Wolf Creek 2
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Film
Robert Drewe’s book Our Sunshine was made into a 2003 film, retitled Ned Kelly, directed by Gregor Jordan and starring Western Australia’s best-known actor Heath Ledger (A Knight’s Tale, Monster’s Ball, Brokeback Mountain, The Dark Knight) alongside compatriots Orlando Bloom, Naomi Watts and Geoffrey Rush.
The award-winning and internationally acclaimed film Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) – directed by Phillip Noyce and starring Everlyn Sampi, Kenneth Branagh and David Gulpilil – is based on the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara. It traces the true story of the author’s mother Molly who, with two other mixed-race girls (Daisy and Grace), ran away from the Moore River Native Settlement just north of Perth, to return to their Aboriginal families, after being forcibly placed there in 1931.
Also based on a true story and several books, (primarily one of the same name, written by Louis de Bernieres) the 2011 film Red Dog tells the tale of a charismatic kelpie/cattle dog cross famous for his travels through Western Australia’s Pilbara region. A prequel, Red Dog: True Blue was released in 2016. A statue dedicated to the real Red Dog’s memory can be found in Dampier (for more information, click here).
The disturbing Australian horror film Wolf Creek (2005), written and directed by Greg McLean and starring John Jarratt as a murderous psychopath who captures and tortures a trio of backpackers, begins in Broome and contains scenes set in Halls Creek and Wolfe Creek National Park, both in Western Australia (although the film was shot in South Australia). The original garnered both negative criticism and acclaim for its relentless intensity, grit and gore, but a rather unimaginative and disappointing sequel, Wolf Creek 2, came out in 2013.
In 2017, Tim Winton’s novel Breath was made into a film starring Perth-born actor Rachael Blake (Lantana) and fellow Australians Simon Baker, Elizabeth Debicki and Richard Roxburgh.