A more detailed analysis of Number One Cloudstreet:
The house and the landscape are personified in Cloudstreet. Winton overlaps the concepts of
architecture and landscape so that they are part of one reality. The house on Cloud Street, like the
characters, has its own prehistory. Back in time it was a large, living house, in which “the mission
girls climbed into bed with one another and cried”.
In a sense it is a metaphor for Australia and a symbol of colonisation.
Back in time, before this house, there were Aboriginal places, many of them sacred spaces. They
were destroyed just as were the young girls, imprisoned by the “very respectable woman” who
“aimed to make ladies of them so they could set a standard for the rest of their sorry race.” The
house is described to have “held its breath” after the deaths of the mission girls.
Sam Pickles at one stage enters the library and feels an atmosphere that made his stomach twist”
turning he sees “the most vicious looking old bitch he’d ever seen in his life.” (343) The irony that
these girls were taken in under the advice of a priest highlights the often misguided altruism of the
church, and suggests a European arrogance over Aboriginal people’s traditional understanding of
the importance of place and family.
The black man tells Sam “You shouldn’t break a place, places are strong, important.” (406)
Winton depicts the role of coloniser symbolically by those who impose on the house- a fence is
erected, a second privy is built and the exterior of the house is changed to accommodate the shop
with its sign hanging out the front.
Winton depicts the act of naming or labelling as a form of power and control. In a sense the Lambs
are repeating the history of the house and the history of the continent- the exertion of control
through language and naming ultimately leading to the destruction of a culture.
The house in Cloud Street is immediately baptised and renamed after its location, becoming
Cloudstreet in one word. This renaming appropriates the ground and the area but unites various
people under the same roof, while at the same time estranging them from the rest of the
neighbourhood and the Perth community. Beyond its symbolic value, the house also suggests a
parallelism with the state as a whole. Cloudstreet is a microcosm and a reflection of society as a
whole.
The house is a reminder that outside of time, the past exists, the spirits of those who have been
here before us remain. It is the love making of Rose and Quick and the birth of Wax Harry that
eventually remove the evil that had remained within the house after the deaths of the mission girls.
It is love that “rattles the wallpaper” and leaves a sweet smell of incense hanging in the room.
Winton describes “the room goes quiet.” What remains in the old library of the house after the
birth of Wax Harry is a The spirits on the wall are fading, fading, finally being forced on their way to
oblivion, free of the house, freeing the house, leaving a ward, clean, sweet space among the
living, among the good and hopeful.” (314)
At all times the house is a metaphor for community, despite the fact that this ideal has been
contradicted by some of what has happened in that place.
It embodies love, happiness, suffering, despair, pain and loss, all of which are intrinsic to a sense
of self.
The blackfella confirms the evil lurking within the walls of the house “his eyes roving about all the
time from wall to ceiling to floor… he turned and ran.” Lester is puzzled and “the house grew quiet
around him”
The house that the Pickles inherit has a key role to play in the novel, it is more than just a stage on
which the Lambs and Pickles play out their saga. The house is described as “this great continent
of the house”, they are aware that it “doesn’t belong to them”. Like the river, the house has a
personality and ecology of its own, which reaches after the imagination of those who settle there.
Cloudstreet spans 20 years and creates a single universe within a single house; its walls may be
permanent but its horizons are continually receding.
After Lester and Sam bond at the races the house is described as all night Cloudstreet ticked, but
it didn’t go off”
The house reacts in an almost human manner to emotional events.
”The house twisted its joints, hugging inwards, sucking in air, and the two women wept together on
the sagging bed” (357) at other times the house breathes, sighs, itches, moans, bruises and
laughs. It is at times difficult to tell if it is the house or the people in it that are quiet or boisterous.
“There’d been a silence in the place for the last year or two, an aching, torniqueted silence”.
Home is a recurrent signifier for Australia’s cultural identity; it encapsulates political and historical
events within the history of the characters. The domestic space of the house develops as a miniAustralia within Australia, encompassing various versions of history and challenging the
established historical truth, namely the big Australian lie that deprived the original inhabitants of
their land and spoilt the natural environment.
Winton commented on the house:
“Here’s two families, against their wills, they go to a strange place, and they settle in this house,
which has lost its innocence and doesn’t want them, and they don’t like it, and they spend the rest
of their life trying to belong… After a while the house seems normal and natural and important to
them. Perhaps this is my sentimental hopefulness about the nation.”
The house itself is full of personal stories; histories embedded in the walls that converse with the
Pickles and Lambs.
The house Rose and Quick dream of, in a “silent, antiseptic” street in a new suburb, made of
“scrubbed bricks, the dinky letterbox, the planted lawns” (404) is reminiscent of the area in which
Winton grew up. “Rose never wanted to live anywhere old, where people had been before.” This
state built house is a stark contrast to the house in Cloud Street. It is all about appearances and is
dreadfully lonely.
After living away from the house in their own family home, Rose and Quick agree that they feel the
need to return. Rose says:
“I like the crowds and the noise. And well, I guess I like the idea, its like getting another childhood,
another go at things. Think of it: I’m in this old house with the boy next door and his baby, and I’m
not miserable and starving or frightened. I’m right in the middle. It’s like a village… its two families.
It’s a bloody tribe, a new tribe.” (418-19)
Oriel finally makes her peace with the house at Number One Cloud Street that has spent twenty
years “trying to itch us out”, she compares it to the new suburbs:
“I don’t know where I’d go anymore. Out there, she flung a hand in no direction at all, they’re
bulldozing streets and old places, fillin’ in the river, like they don’t want to leave any traces behind.”
She reminds Sam that “A house should be a home, a privilege, not a possession” (410) For Oriel,
her home is something to be proud of, when the doctor suggests sending Fish to a specialised
home she answers him “There’s no home as specialised as mine.” (67-68)
When the Pickles are finally able to sell, no one wants to leave. The house has come to represent
family and continuity.
The call of home is experienced powerfully by Rose, Dolly and Quick at different stages of the
novel. For Rose it is the voice of Fish that calls her beyond Toby Raven’s posturing. For Quick, the
caller is an Aboriginal man who turns up from time to time in various unlikely guises and who is
ultimately revealed to be a secret witness to the entire tale.
The Aboriginal man serves to remind the characters of the importance of place, just as he does
with the importance of family. The Aboriginal man says to Sam “You live there” referring to
Cloudstreet, and Sam’s reply is “Yeah, I own it” (p405). This is a familiar representation of the
difference between Aboriginal and European relationships to place.
“It was a big, sad, two storey affair in a garden full of fruit trees. The widows were long, buckling
sashed things with whote scrollwork under the sills. Here and there weatherboards peeled away
from the walls and protruded like lifrting scabs, but there was still enough white paint on the place
to give it a grand air and it seemed to lord it above the other houses in the street which were
modest little red brick cottages. It was big enough for twenty people. There were so many rooms
you could get lost and unnerved. From upstairs you could see into everyone else’s yard, and
through the trees to the railway line and the sea of sooty grass beside it. The garden was gone to
ruin. The fish ponds were dry; orange, lemon, apple, mulberry and mandarin trees were arthritic
and wild. Creeping rose grew like a nest of thorns”.
Essential Reading:
Chapter 3: (pp. 35-44, 51, 55, 59-60, 61-62, 67-68)
Chapter 5: (pp. 145-146)
Chapter 6: (pp. 208-210, 219-220)
Chapter 7: (pp 223-225)
Chapter 9: (pp. 314, 325-328, 344-345, 357, 362-363, 369, 383-385)
Chapter 10: (pp. 389-390, 403-406, 408-412, 418-419)
Self and place – Connecting Number One Cloudstreet to the Idea of Self and Place:
In Cloudstreet self-knowledge and discovery of one’s place in the world is inexorably
connected. In certain ways all the members of the Lamb and Pickles families are
lost, unable to connect with others, and in many ways unable to connect with
themselves. In the walls of Number One Cloud Street the inhabitants come to both
discover and accept themselves, their weaknesses, flaws and needs.
However, the families do not initially feel a sense of belonging in the house. When
the Pickles family first moves into the house they experience ‘the big emptiness of
the house around them, almost paralysing them with spaces and surfaces that yield
nothing’ (p. 41). Initially, ‘they’re lost’ (p. 41). However, like the settlers who
colonised Australia all those years ago, the Pickles and Lamb families eventually
discover a sense of connection and belonging to the sprawling house.
Quick does leave the house at a certain juncture to become a kangaroo culler in the
rural outback of Western Australia. In doing so, he attempts to construct a wholly
masculine identity, one associated with the iconic rugged outback hero. This image,
created by Quick’s momentary association with the bush landscape is, however,
ultimately unsatisfactory, as the text challenges the traditional association between
Australian identity and the rural landscape. In fact, the young man becomes even
more isolated and pensive. His time in the bush does not allow previously
unrecognised strength and resilience to surface, rather Quick becomes wounded
and suffers while away from home. While ill he experiences a vision of Fish rowing
towards him in an orange crate, over a sea of wheat, clearly emblematic of the
connection the water provides the brothers. Eventually, Quick returns home to
Cloudstreet, and recognises the vital connection between self and place.
Rose and Quick build a new house, the decision driven by her desire for ‘a new
house ... in a new suburb in a new street’ (p. 326). The house is described as a ‘brick
box with its red tile roof same as all the other half-finished houses in the street. It
looked empty‘ (p. 339), representing the mass-produced dwellings which were built
in the suburbs of major Australian cities over the post-war decades. However,
Cloudstreet evokes a sense of nostalgia for the country before the post-war
economic boom, and this is manifested in Rose and Quick’s final decision to remain
at Cloudstreet. When Quick goes to visit the new house, he is met by the Aboriginal
man, who tells him, ‘This isn’t your home. Go home to your home mate.’ (p. 362)
acknowledging the sacred bond that exists between an individual and a certain
place. It is Cloudstreet that is, for all these characters, home, ‘Quick felt safe here,
he felt within his boundaries’ (p. 369).
Towards the end of the novel, Quick contemplates Cloudstreet:
‘I reckon they belong to the place. Gawd, everyone knows that house. They know
the shop, our families. It’s like they’ve built something else from just being there.
Like—he laughed at himself—like a house within a house’ (p. 418).
The connection between self and place is not a new idea in Australian culture. The
Indigenous population knew well the spiritual significance of place. The Aboriginal
man in Winton’s tale continually asserts the primacy of belonging to a space and the
impact this connectedness has on one’s sense of identity. It is interesting to note that
Number One Cloud Street provides a metaphor for Australia’s displacement of its
native inhabitants and the subsequent feelings of guilt experienced by the nation.
Some critics have noted that while the birth of Wax Harry, while clearly releases the
tortured ghosts of the past, this fails to adequately deal with the dispossession of
Indigenous land by European settlers.
The inhabitants of Cloudstreet certainly garner a sense of identity from the house.
They are identified from the beginning of the novel as different from the other nearby
families, ‘People stared at them from passing trains. Neighbours winced in
anticipation of gang fights’ (p. 51). They are at once removed, and yet entirely
connected.
EXAM QUESTION 2014:
“Number One Cloud Street is more than just a house”
Discuss