Cassie McCullough

Malcolm Knox's Bluebird is published by Allen and Unwin, and you can listen to an interview with Malcolm Knox by Claire Nichols on the next edition of the book show here on ABC Radio National.

Now, as a kid, he was living in a town on the West Australian coast where there wasn't much to do except perhaps be enthralled to the water and the desire to be something other than ordinary.

And then, when he was a kid, they called him Pikelet.

So Stuart and Johan, I know you've both read this book a number of times and I wonder if we could go straight to the most striking thing about it.

So Johan, when you think about this book and what it means to you, what do you remember?

Now, my guess, Johan, is that this is the same moment that we all will have remembered.

So I wonder if before you read it, I can ask Stuart what his most intense memory of this book is.

something pointless and elegant.

Is this the same passage, Johan, that you were going to read?

So how about you give us your extract, Johan?

And Stuart, does Tim Winton get it right when he describes the act of surfing?

So if we turn back to those characters, though, you've got this kid, Pikelet, and his friend, Looney.

What are they looking for, Stuart?

What is it that they need in this small life they're living in a town on the West Australian coast?

And at first they get it by holding their breath, by diving in the river and holding onto the roots at the bottom and seeing how much they can scare people.

And then they realise that if they head out to the beach, if they take their surfboards, then they're going to find something wondrous and exciting.

But then they meet an older surfer, Sando.

What happens then?

But what he's doing is he's also showing them that they might reach for something sublime, something dangerous, something huge.

And so they go out towards the Bombora and the huge breaks off the coast, the most dangerous waves.