Cloudstreet

Original version

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

Radio 4

Radio 4 (FM)

Drama on 4

Drama

Drama from BBC Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra.

BBC Radio 4 LW

Drama on 4: Cloudstreet: Welcome to Cloud Street

Welcome to Cloud Street

BBC Radio 4 - Drama on 4, Cloudstreet, Welcome to Cloud Street

Out of separate catastrophes two families end up sharing a crumbling pile - Cloudstreet.

Tim Winton’s funny, sprawling saga is an epic novel of love and acceptance.  Cloudstreet is a celebration of people, places and rhythms which has fuelled imaginations world-wide.

Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet is a book about finding one’s place in the world and the search for meaning in life. From separate catastrophes, two rural families flee to the city and find themselves sharing a great, breathing, shuddering joint called Cloudstreet, where they begin their lives again from scratch.  For 20 years they roister and rankle, laugh and curse until the roof over their heads becomes a home for their hearts. 

Tim Winton’s funny, sprawling saga is an epic novel of love and acceptance. Winner of the Miles Franklin and NBC Awards in Australia, Cloudstreet is a celebration of people, places and rhythms which has fuelled imaginations world-wide.

The book follows the two families from the time they leave their rural homes and move into Cloudstreet, a big, old house in Perth. Both moves are precipitated by disaster. For the Lambs, this misfortune takes the form of the near-drowning of the family favourite, Samson, better known as Fish. For the Pickles, it occurs in the loss of father Sam’s fingers in a fishing accident. 

These mishaps mean that both ‘Sams’ – like the biblical Samson – lose some of their strengths, but they also gain new opportunities and insights. Sam Pickles’ move to the city brings him a home of his own and a job at the Mint – a stroke of poetic justice for a man addicted to gambling. Although Fish loses his mental faculties as a result of his accident, and is unable to communicate with the outside world, his near-drowning and subsequent bond with water also lead him to a new life as a visionary, and it is this ‘other’ Fish who is the omniscient narrator of the novel.

The two families are a study in contrasts, ‘squared off at one another like opposing platoons’. The Lambs are righteous, God-fearing, hard working and parsimonious while the Pickles are licentious wastrels. The Lambs find meaning in industry and in God’s grace; the Pickles, in luck. The Lambs’ God is a maker of miracles; the Pickles’ God is the ‘Shifty Shadow’ of fate. Both families are often betrayed by their faith.

Cloudstreet belongs to an Australian cultural tradition of family sagas and yarns – as well as to that universal tradition of telling stories in order to find meaning in the chaos of existence. Each of its characters carries with them a small history which, in turn, becomes part of a complicated, rambling series of stories. Seen together, these strands convey the idea that we are all, in our hearts, inextricably linked to each other via the networks we are part of: family, suburb, city, nation.

Rose Pickles decides to return to Cloudstreet with Quick because, ‘It’s like getting another childhood, another go at things...It’s like a village'. Like every character in the book, Rose’s personal narrative is underpinned by a search for love and the certainties of the past. The search for meaning in life can thus be summarised in one word, love – although Tim Winton might call it grace. 

This state of love or grace is described in the opening scenes of the book: ‘The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living.’

Cloudstreet is dramatised for radio by D.J. Britton.

CAST:
Oriel Lamb - Kerry Fox  
Lester Lamb - Jonathan Hyde
Sam Pickles - Richard Dillane
Dolly Pickles – Felicity Ward 
Rose Pickles - Kate Winter
Quick Lamb - James Frecheville
Fish Lamb - Tom Glenister
Beryl – Jane Slavin
Nyoongah man – Wayne Blair

Other parts played by members of the cast. 

Directed by Eoin O’Callaghan.
A Big Fish Radio production for BBC Radio 4

Drama on 4: Cloudstreet

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Tim Winton's chronicle of two mismatched families sharing a house in Western Australia.

Tim Winton's chronicle of two very different families, thrown together by misfortune, sharing a house in Western Australia over two decades in the mid-20th century.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Drama on 4

Cloudstreet

Welcome to Cloud Street

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 4 FM

About BBC Radio 4