Winton does it again!

Tim Winton has done it again—finding a way to tell his story of young people and older people, together trying to work out what it means to be human, particularly a white, male human in this wide, dry land.

The Shepherd’s Hut is a story narrated by Jaxie Clackton (where does Winton get these names from?), a teenager on the run from his appalling home life to the welcoming prospect of a different life with his girl. En route, in the rugged outback of Western Australia, he meets Fintan, an elderly man whom he imagines to be largely deranged. Each has a past they prefer not to divulge, yet in spite of their mutual wariness Jaxie is encouraged to find some fresh perspective on his life.

There are many aspects to this story I will not recount, not comment upon. You just have to read it. I do want to observe just one thing, however, which is the way Winton manages to work into his story the existential yearnings, not only of his characters but of our nation, it seems to me. Winton has an acute sense of the lostness of immigrant Australians when it comes to things ‘spiritual’. By ‘lost’ I do not mean what old-time Evangelicals used to mean by that term—referring to all those they considered were ‘going to hell’.

I mean the sense of bewilderment, not-knowing, and feeling essentially unsure how to work one’s way out of this situation, if indeed there is a way ‘out’. Here there is in fact a spiritual awareness: it is an awareness that there is in fact some depth to life, some profound meaning. Like the continent itself, there is a deep and rich centre. But, as Winton has often observed, we do not like to go there, except perhaps for occasional forays in the comfort and protection of our four-wheel drives.

We are unsure of what to make of it all, and largely without a language, without meaningful symbols and rituals to enable us to find out. The indigenous people have both, but we do not. The Church once provided such, at least for some, but for most that program just does not compute. Jaxie is both articulate, insofar as he can put words to his thoughts, feelings and longings, and yet he senses that all that too is not where and who he wants to be. So too, Fintan has more word, more educated words, and mumbles to himself constantly, using imagery and references from another land, another time, and he too knows that he is lost.

Then comes a time when, on the brink of conflict, again, the tension and struggle that seems to be Jaxie’s life, a remarkable revelation comes to him. It is both a dream and a waking encounter with the land. And it is this discovery that truly unites the two men, across their cultural differences, and it comes just in time, as Jaxie is readying himself for what he thinks will be the end of the affair.

It’s about the rocks, large protrusions onto the horizon, towards the salt plain. Jaxie senses that some-how they are not just rocks. They are creatures, perhaps even people—or, as the indigenous people know, the spirits of those who have gone before speak to us through such features of the land.

Fintan recounts his perceptions of this, as Jaxie is both incredulous and yet also begins to recognize his own experience as well.

How many are there? These walking rocks.

  Oh, five or six that come in close. Maybe a hundred stand off back towards the lake. And I can feel them taking me in, sizing me up. And in the dream, every time, I’m certain they know my darkest secrets. They see right into me, Jaxie. And I’m frightened and ashamed and I want to tell them everything.

 Like confess?

 Aye.

 All your sins and whatnot?

 All of it.

 But they’re rocks!

 You see, that’s the thing. In the dream, they never seem so rock-like. They’re bigger, of course, the size of you and me. And there’s grandness to them, something severe and monumental. It makes the heart race, lad. And I am afraid each time they appear, very fearful, but then I feel their great dispassion, their purity. I can trust them with everything I know, everything I fear. And the relief of knowing that, Jaxie, I can’t begin to tell you. (page 226f)

But he has, and Jaxie too begins to see that what he has sensed also is the land receiving him, both judging and accepting him, and yet also indifferent to him. The land, the rocks, are here spiritual presences—perhaps akin to The Riders in another novel.

Fintan goes on to speak further of his sense of the moon and stars also as having similar significance, reminding him of what the Psalm expresses so bluntly, ‘that we are dust’.

Before that, however, there is another moment of explanation about the rocks, but with them also the trees. Fintan says that his dream-encounters with the rocks leave him with a sense of ‘a man fallen short’, and Jaxie feels such compassion for him that he says, ‘It’s only a dream’. But Fintan is not prepared to leave it at that. He is not prepared to dismiss it.

Ah, perhaps it is. And nothing more. Who knows, Jaxie. Maybe it’s the stones and trees who’ll be our judges in the end.

             And the goats and the roos?

             Could be so.

             And the birds?

             Oh, especially the birds.

 Here is Winton’s message for us all. It is indeed in encounter with the land that we will meet our match, our judge. We learn that we are dust—and yet, too, that these same elements which we consider inanimate, objects just there for our taking or spectacles for our admiration are in fact deeply mysterious presences. They are realities speaking to our deepest realities, if we can learn to hear, to see, to open ourselves to their depth and wisdom. They may judge us, but never utterly repudiate us. They invite us to find ourselves again.

Winton might have drawn our attention to insights found in the Hebrew Bible and again in the Christian Testament. The prophet Habakkuk says of those who exploit the poor, who make captives of other peoples and who pile up stolen goods, building their houses by unjust gain, ‘The stones of the wall will cry out, and the beams of the woodwork will echo it’. (Habakkuk 2. v 11). Here there is the same sense of judgment upon those who think they can exploit people and the earth. Again, in Luke’s Gospel we find a story of the ‘little people’ celebrating Jesus as one who comes to provide them with justice and a new order of peace. But there are those who want the people to be quiet (perhaps wanting to avoid any disturbance and the reaction of the occupying power, the Romans). But Jesus says, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’ (Luke 19.40). I have, frankly, never known what to make of that.

Winton makes something of it, without mentioning it. He doesn’t need to. He has found that same sense of the challenging spiritual presence. We have indeed silenced the innocent, unselfconscious faith-feeling of so many people. It has been overcome by the many preoccupations of our ‘life-style’, which in so many ways fails to give life, and denies any life to the world around us, the rocks and stones, the goats and the roos, ‘especially the birds’.

But they judge us: firmly, strongly, but with compassion. Learn again.

Winton has done it again.