I mentioned a while ago Island Home, Tim Winton’s love song to the Australian wilderness, which came out in Britain last year. There’s another chance on Radio 4 Extra to hear an adaptation of an earlier memoir, Land’s Edge (2012), in which Winton reflects on how childhood days at the coast have shaped him as a writer. The reading is by Stephen Dillane.

Winton writes:

In my memory of childhood there’s always the smell of bubbling tar, of Pink Zinc, the briny smell of the sea. It’s always summer and I’m on Scarborough beach, blinded by light and with my shirt off and my back a map of dried salt and peeling sunburn. There are waves crackin’ on the sandbar and the rip flags are up…
Out there is west, true west. The sea is where the sun goes at the end of the day; where it lives while you sleep. I have a fix on things when I know where west is.