One of my undergraduate students says Tim Winton is her ‘pony-tailed prince’ and gets very persnickety if anyone should criticise her Tim. I have always felt affection for our Tim too. It’s a special thing on our far flung Western shore to have a writer wandering amongst us with such a lofty reputation here and abroad so I always read his books. I have to—I’m compelled to know what he has to say about our scarified landscape, our capricious coastline and scorched folk. I recognise his subjects and their salty fishermen’s feet. They live here.

Eyrie starts with a wet stain of unknown origin on the carpet of a skanky flat in a decrepit high-rise in Fremantle. There is no romance in that. It’s a very unappealing starting point. I read thirty pages of Eyrie early this year, when it was new, and I didn’t get past that. I realised though, that Tim was going to give a big serve to the things about the West that most of us who live here despise, especially those of us who look scornfully at the environmental and social carnage caused by colossal mines, cashed up bogans and more deforestation. I knew I’d go back for more. I had to. But it did mean reading the wet carpet scene twice.