The audience filed into the Victorian splendour of the Town Hall, a structure that showcases the immense wealth flowing from resource exploitation 200 years in the past, as they waited for Tim Winton to discuss his latest novel, Juice, a powerful work that imagines the dire consequences of resource depletion 200 years in the future.

The session, titled ‘A National Living Treasure’ and expertly chaired by broadcaster and author, Richard Fidler, was the Gala Closing Event of Adelaide Writers’ Week, and while nominally billed as a discussion of Winton’s eleventh novel, the night’s fascinating conversation used the novel as a touchstone as it ranged across myriad topics from snorkelling with whale sharks to the rise of fascism in contemporary politics.

Juice marks an exciting new venture for Winton. While his previous novels have been set in contemporary times (Cloudstreet the exception to this rule as a work of historical fiction), Juice imagines a dire time 200 years in the future, a super-heated world in which humans are living with the consequences of climate catastrophe.  Set in the tropical north-west of Australia, the unnamed narrator and a child are fleeing south. They seek refuge in a disused mine, only to be taken prisoner by a man armed with a bow. Bargaining for their lives, the narrator tells the bowman his life story, beginning with his frugal childhood as self-sufficient ‘homesteader’ surviving the increasingly extreme weather by retreating underground each summer. It’s an enthralling work, made all the more powerful by the plausibility of the trajectory Winton imagines between our contemporary situation and the dystopian world of the novel.

Rather than dive immediately into the environmental and political concerns that provoked the novel, Fidler begins the conversation with Winton’s love of Ningaloo Reef and the rare privilege of snorkelling with whale sharks.

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Fidler cleverly began the conversation on a positive note, as soon the discussion swerved to diving at Scott Reef, a rare coral atoll in the Timor Sea, where Winton experienced the distressing reality of extreme ocean temperatures and their devastating consequences for marine ecosystems down the length of the Western Australian coast.

Coral bleaching formed a natural segue into the discussion of the role of writers and artists in the face of current political and environmental crises. Winton was adamant — artists don’t get a free pass. It is their obligation as citizens to pay attention and not turn away or be vague.

This led into a powerful examination of the power of art and literature to succeed where politics fails. Winton had been worried about launching Juice into a world in which our ‘attention economy was fragmented and attenuated’. He felt there was a ‘dark wave of aversion’ in which people were distracting themselves with ‘tripe’. Yet he held onto the belief that art and story impacts hearts and minds in ways that politics struggles to achieve.

Asked about whether he believed art to be a luxury, Winton was quick to assert that he believes the opposite to be true. To Winton, art and literature are ‘fundamental human nutrition’ and precious in that they bind us together and make us comprehensible to each other.

Touching once more on the novel and his research into the climate modelling and the terrifying conditions that potentially lie in our future, Winton was surprisingly positive about humanity’s potential to turn the situation around. Quoting a Les Murray poem about the common trait of “shopping in despair’s boutiques” Winton was adamant that despair is not a virtue, and that humanity has the resources, genius and knowledge to change the trajectory of our future.

Whether discussing the destructive power of humiliation and its proclivity for curdling into violence or the definition of environmental destruction as not tragedy but crime, Winton remained articulate, philosophical and extraordinarily down to earth. However, given his recent immersion in dystopian imagination, most impressive was Winton’s conviction that humans are vessels of unlimited potential, able to rise to face this moment, be our best selves and not accept despair or cowardice.

This was an extraordinary session, delving into the mind of a ‘living national treasure’ and while Winton may humbly demur from that title, he left a Town Hall full of people who would heartily agree.

Tim Winton appeared at Adelaide Town Hall on Thursday March 6 as part of Adelaide Writers’ Week and Adelaide Festival

Read more 2025 Adelaide Festival coverage here on InReview