Aboriginality in Winton's Cloudstreet

By frank lamacchia, High School Student

A talk on Aboriginality in Cloudstreet. (very dodgy paragraphing because it was a talk)

An essay hosted at LiteratureClassics.com

Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet is a nostalgic celebration of Australian culture. The novel presents a diverse understanding of Australia in the historical context spanning from the 1940’s until the 1960’s. Cloudstreet delves into the lives of two white Australian families, tracing their individual and collective struggles and triumphs. While the novel is presented from the viewpoint of two white families, Cloudstreet reflects the value and sacred nature of Aboriginal culture. This is presented through many of the novels themes, including the importance of belonging to ones family, a home and the natural world. Throughout the text it is evident that the two families, the Lambs and the Pickles are involved in a perpetual struggle for family unity. For the Pickles, many of the problems in achieving family unity stem from Dolly Pickles, as a result of her alcoholism and promiscuity. In the character of Dolly Pickles, Winton demonstrates the problems a family has, when one member is unable to fulfill their role in the family, in this case Dolly’s role as a mother and wife. Dolly shows an inability to act as a maternal figure to her children, instead she regularly gets drunk and offers sexual favors to many and varied random men. Dolly’s ignorance of her role as a mother, to be at home nurturing her children, leads Rose to feel a bitter hatred toward Dolly, ‘Hating you is the best part of being alive.’ Thus, it is blatant that Dolly’s inability to act as a mother, creates significant tension and disharmony in the family, and this has a negative rippling effect. This severe family disharmony is something that is implicitly challenged within the text by Aboriginal values. Aboriginal culture emphasizes the importance of family unity.
This is evident in traditional Aboriginal cultures where the unity of the family and extended family is valued, as it enables the individual qualities of family members to enhance the overall standard of living. It is indeed Rose, the most traumatized character as a result of family disunity that reflects upon the importance of belonging to the ‘tribe.’ As a result of her marriage to Quick and attaining the love and support of another family, Rose finds that she can begin to forgive her own family and embrace Aboriginal values of family unity within the ‘tribe’. ‘Rose found soft parts still left in herself, soft parts in Dolly as well, and in a way she figured it saved her from herself.’ Rose’s sense of belonging within the Lamb family as a result of her marriage to Quick enables her to be able to see the importance of family and forgive her mother. Previous to her marriage Rose is encompassed by a bitter hatred for her mother and her opportunity to belong to a family saves herself from the dark feelings within her. Therefore it is evident that traditional Aboriginal values concerning the importance of family love and unity are embraced within this text.In depicting the importance of white families embracing Aboriginal values regarding family, Winton is suggesting that owing to our historical ignorance, there is still much to learn from Aboriginal culture. However, we have ignored Aboriginal culture for so long, with the emplacement of imperialist policies such as White Australia and assimilation. It is ironic that there is so much to learn from traditional Aboriginal culture about family and yet white Australia has ignored these values for so long, and tried to break Aboriginal culture and families apart.
Closely tied in to theme of belonging to a family, is the theme of belonging to a home. The Pickles initially occupy number one Cloud Street as a result of inheritance with a proviso they are unable to sell it for twenty years. The Lamb’s then move into the house as they are escaping Margaret River, the site of Fish Lamb’s drowning. The house is personified within the text, it is given human qualities of groaning, breathing and also experiences a type of journey. The notion of a place being reflective of the living beings that occupy it, is an Aboriginal value that is prominent within this text. The omniscient narrator establishes the history of the house and the terrible suicide that occurred as a result of the ‘very respectable woman’ that previously occupied Cloudstreet psychologically torturing the young Aboriginal girls that were imprisoned within the house. The novel suggests that this type of evil lingers within the house, ‘a smell of shit and corruption rises out of the wood.’ However, Winton presents the notion that the house does not have to be overwhelmed by this evil forever, it can be shaped by other powerful events. Thus when Rose and Quick enter the dark room where the old woman died, full of passion and lover for one another, there is a positive force and energy that enters the room. The love and positive emotions create a ‘warm, clean sweet space among the living, among the good and the hopeful’ which erode away at the evil that was previously existent. In Aboriginal culture, certain land marks such as Pinjarra are sacred because of the events that have taken place and it is evident that the house is shaped by the events that occur within its walls. It becomes the sacred site of Quick and Rose.However, many of the white characters within the text are ignorant of Aboriginal culture, obviously acting as correspondents of their ignorant cultural context. Sam Pickles seriously considers selling Cloudstreet, as his proviso of not selling for twenty years expires. He does not recognize the importance of the house and that the house has became a part of who they are, as they have all directly shaped the physical and spiritual precense of the house. It takes the ‘black man’ the symbol of Aboriginal culture to stress the importance of place. It is only then that Sam realizes that ‘You shouldn’t break a place. Places are strong, important.’ This realization contrasts typically white values of ownership, with Aboriginal values of coexistence with the land. Cloudstreet has became important to the Lambs’ and Pickle’s, it has shared with them their history and has became the sacred site for the eventual unity of the two families, evident literally in the marriage of Rose and Quick and metaphorically in the dancing shared between Oriel and Dolly. The house shares this spiritual energy and for it to be simply bulldozed would be to destroy the positive energy. Thus it is evident that Cloudstreet reflects that there is much worth in Aboriginal values concerning place and home. Furthermore, Cloudstreet suggests that the physical environment and nature are of significant influence. Through Winton’s serene description of the picnic at the river, nature is presented as a site of celebration, the beauty of human nature celebrated in coincidence with the beauty of Mother Nature. That is one aspect of Aboriginal coexistence with the land and nature. However, there is a far more challenging one that is critical within the text.
That is the drowning of Fish Lamb, both as a child that renders him retarded and as an adult, that enables him to enter into the spiritual world. The event of Fish’s drowning as he narrates: ‘I feel my manhood, I recognize myself whole and human…I’m Fish Lamb for those seconds to take to die, as long as it takes to drink the river.’ It is often challenging for a contemporary reader, to see drowning and dying of asphyxiation as a spiritual event. Drowning is often associated with significant pain and a feeling of helplessness, a desire to breathe in the oxygen that is our life source.

Conversely, drawing from traditional Aboriginal culture, Cloudstreet presents that the only way for Fish to be truly free, is to enter the spiritual world. By entering the spiritual world, he becomes free of his disability and becomes enlightened, as illustrated by his omniscient narration. Fish seeks out the river, which he should have died in as a child and seeks to get out of the purgatory of living a retarded existence, entering into the spiritual world he belongs to. Fish’s drowning reflects Aboriginal values of the spiritual precense entering into nature, as a consequence of the ending of the physical life. Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet is a text that challenges the cultural domination of white Australians. Traditional Aboriginal culture is presented as a valuable insight into spirituality and a sense of place. The text presents the coexistence between Aboriginal culture and the other cultures existent within Australia. This is done remarkably using white families as a conduit of displaying Aboriginal culture, awakening white readers to the historical ignorance Australia has shown to Aboriginal culture. We can realize that there is much for us to learn from Aboriginal culture.