David Malouf

And the attic is the secret place that kids like to go and explore and where they go and find all these objects that belong to their parents' past or the house's past.

In Queensland, it's underneath, not above.

Freudian ideas say that when we dream of a house, maybe it's you, I don't know, I can't remember, but the house represents the self in our dreams all the time in these spaces.

I wonder what it says if we put a...

If we're throwing all our old broken stuff up into the top of our heads, as opposed to the old broken stuff going down to the basements, down to the bottom part.

Well, it's interesting that when Freud wants to find a metaphorical embodiment for the unconscious, you enter it through a kind of trapdoor.

You didn't have to go through the trapdoor in Queensland.

You just went down the back stairs and there you were.

There it all was, this whole wonder world that parents never went into.

You mentioned your grandparents.

They had a shop on that corner of Evanston Street and Melbourne Street, I think it was, in Brisbane, South Brisbane.

They were Lebanese migrants to Australia.

What was the shop like?

Give me a picture of that shop.

The shop was rather grand.

It was an emporium, was it?

No, it wasn't an emporium.

It was a corner shop.

But it had beaten tin ceilings, which are quite beautiful, you know, as they were in those days.

Yes, lilies and stuff.