The Shepherd's Hut by Tim Winton

Jaxie Clackton is an abused teenager, the product of a dysfunctional family upbringing. His father is a violent drunk, while his mother who’s spirit was long ago broken by the man she married, has died after a protracted battle with cancer. Now it’s just Jaxie alone with his father who’s beatings show no sign of relenting. Jaxie has fantasised about killing his father, but is far too intimidated to try. The family live in a small rural town in Australia where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Mr Clackton’s overbearing nature is not a secret. Due to his circumstances, Jaxie has been in a lot of trouble in his life. He’s not shy of using his fists himself and has been expelled from school. So when Jaxie arrives home one evening to find his father crushed to death by a car he was fixing up, he reckons he will get the blame, that people will conclude he brought the car down on his father’s head.

So Jaxie runs.

There’s one person in Jaxie’s life that he cares for, his cousin Lee, with whom he’s fallen in love. Lee is the daughter of his mother’s sister and lives quite far away. Jaxie and Lee were also found together by Mr Clackton who told Jaxie’s mother and aunt (Lee’s mother). So his welcome at his aunt’s is uncertain. Instead, he hopes to elope with Lee. 

But first he has to get there.

So begins an oddysey into the bush and across the Australian outback. Jaxie is well used to hunting, having done so with his father, so he’s equipped to survive. Even so, he soon runs into challenges. Food is not a problem, shooting kangaroos and dressing them for their meat is something he’s done many times before. But how to keep the meat from spoiling, or attracting wild dogs? Then there’s water, which in such an arid landscape is always in desperate short supply. While searching for solutions, he stumbles upon Fintan MacGillis, a recluse living alone in a hut. At first he’s suspicious of the man, especially when he discovers he used to be a priest; Jaxie fears Fintan might be a peadophile, that this might explain why the old man is living alone in the middle of nowhere. Soon though they reluctantly and hesitantly become friends.

The Shepherd’s Hut is a sparse book written in terse sentences. It’s a book about Jaxie, yes, but it’s also about Fintan, and more than that, the landscape they make their home. This is a book as much about the Australian bush, the outback, as it is about the human characters. In an age where much of the world’s population resides in cities and urban sprawl, where modern telecommunications mean we can communicate with people across the globe, and where air travel has not just enabled international travel, but ensured there are few places untouched by tourism, it is easy to forget that any wilderness remain. This novel reminds us that not only do such places still exist, but that they do precisely because of their inhospitality. The outback here is an unforgiving and brutal place, one where few people could survive for long.

The sense of place that the author imbues The Shepherd’s Hut with is complemented by its characters, for it takes a certain robust resilience to survive in such a landscape, a toughness that few possess. Fintan has been dumped there, regularly supplied by his mysterious benefactors, though he kills and dresses goats who wander onto his grounds. Jaxie is more than that, a born survivor, and one with a purpose. He’s determined to be reunited with Lee and this gives him the motivation to surmount the odds.

The Shepherd’s Hut is a brilliant novel and one penned by a clearly talented author. I have never read anything by Tim Winton before but am already looking to purchase titles from his back catalogue. A paean to people's ability to survive the odds and to a brutal yet beautiful Australian wilderness, this is not a book to miss.

5 out of 5 stars