When Tim Winton won his first literary award, The Australian/Vogel Award in 1981 for his first book, An Open Swimmer, he borrowed a pair of elastic-sided boots - Cuban heels, square toes and all - and boarded a plane for the first time in his life to travel from his West Australian home to Sydney to accept it.
Last night, he was announced the winner, for a record-breaking fourth time, of the Miles Franklin Award for his novel Breath, but was nowhere near the gala dinner at the NSW State Library in Sydney.
Winton has shunned award nights since his first Miles Franklin, in 1984, for Shallows.
"I was overawed that first time," he said yesterday, using a borrowed phone, talking from near his beloved Ningaloo Reef, off Western Australia's North West Cape.
"It was odd and strange and I think I was almost as surprised as everybody else, but I haven't been to an award night since then, once I realised you don't actually have to go.
"I don't go to many festivals either, I've just usually got other things to do and I'm not good in a crowd."
Winton also won the Miles Franklin Award in 1992, for Cloudstreet, and 2002, for Dirt Music.
Breath, his 12th book of fiction, is about a young man's initiation into the twin dangers of sex and surfing.
It begins with a traumatic scene of death by self-strangulation, setting the scene for Winton's exploration of what happens when personal morals are subjugated to the desire for physical sensation.
It is a novel, Winton said, about how people have "no moral compass about the consequences of living".
"We live this bizarre abstract life," he said. "We think someone can come in with therapy or analgesia, that can relieve us of the consequences, and it's about not taking the flesh seriously, as though there's no discomfort in corporeal existence, as though someone - your mum, the state or your lawyer - will fix you up."
Winton, 48, has spent the past week on a boat travelling to the Montebello Islands, 130km off the Pilbara coast and the site of 1950s British nuclear tests. He recorded a speech for the Miles Franklin Award announcement dinner, in which he made the point loud and clear that he is against changes to the territorial copyright laws.
"It's been quite difficult for the labourers in our industry to get their voice across," Winton said, "so you would feel a bit derelict just saying I'd like to thank my mum and dad and agent.
"I came of age during the new Australia, in cultural terms, and I've experienced the difference of us having our own territorial copyright.
"If we change the laws, the odds are we will lose things because it's essentially ceding power to larger foreign traders - rights they aren't asking for, but if there is an open door, they will come in.
"We are potentially training a new generation of literary exiles and that's bitterly disappointing."
This is great news for Winton. He is the writer of a generation. I wonder how many other australian writers have won 4 Franklins? not too many i would guess. Well done to him.
