I recently read Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet on a road trip along the Great Ocean Road, between Adelaide and Melbourne. I picked an Australian novel for this journey, as I wanted to dream and breathe in Australia. It isn’t often one reads “fair dinkum” as everyday phraseology.

Cloudstreet is a book about families surviving adversity during the period that Australia was involved in the second World War. The Lamb and Pickles families are thrown together in a large house on Cloudstreet in Perth. Both families live under one roof but in different worlds, neither of which seem happy. Winton’s writing is irresistible, making it easy to escape into the heat of 1940s Perth.

I regret that I never got to see the famous Company B production of Cloudstreet at the 1999 Dublin Theatre Festival. It has always been described as a magical piece of theatre. I do, however, have fond memories of sitting in the Melbourne sunshine bidding a tearful goodbye to the Lambs and Pickles at the end of my trip and realising that Australia, like the wonderful characters in Cloudstreet, had won my heart.

– as told to Sara Keating

Jen Coppinger works for Arts Audiences and is a freelance producer. Upcoming productions include Dogs, by Emma Martin Dance, from September 10th to 15th, at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre, as part of Absolut Fringe Festival