Being bored in the Perth suburbs inspired this Oscar-winning writer
Writer Shaun Tan highlighted the magic and whimsy of everyday Australia in his book Tales from Outer Suburbia. He talks about finding inspiration in the mundane, and what it was like turning his tales into TV.
Growing up in suburban Perth in the early 1980s, Shaun Tan was frequently bored.
The waterfront suburb of Hillarys is well developed now, but it was "a bit of a nowhere sort of place" when Tan was a kid.
"My parents moved out there without much community connection, and they started building a house on this block of land in a place they didn't know very well," the author and illustrator says.
He would explore the park next to his house and ride his bike around with other kids from the neighbourhood. The long days spent circling the suburbs were fertile ground for his imagination.
"There was that sense that you were in this castaway universe. A lot of boredom but then, occasionally, you would encounter strange things," he says.
Shaun Tan has written and illustrated 14 books, and provided artwork for numerous others. (Supplied: Shaun Tan/Allen & Unwin)
"There was always something going on as you'd be riding your bike around this wide, empty street. And what wasn't going on you would fill with your own thoughts and imagination."
Tan grew up to nurture a career from his imaginings, writing and illustrating 14 books (and illustrating more). He even won an Oscar award for a short film adaptation of one of his titles, The Lost Thing.
Now another of his books — Tales from Outer Suburbia (2008) — has been adapted into an animated series for ABC iview.
This book is directly inspired by the musings, flights of fancies and odd things of his childhood suburb.
The TV version of Tales from Outer Suburbia focuses on Klara and Pim, who have reluctantly moved with their mum Lucy to a new house in the suburbs. (ABC iview)
"I do remember once there was some kind of strange wind and I went down to the park," Tan describes. "And tons of newspapers had somehow been caught up in the wind and it was just blowing across the landscape."
The moment was recreated in the book and makes for a poetic scene in the new series.
"It was a fairly ordinary thing, but it had its own magic," Tan says.
That statement basically summarises most of his work: imbuing the mundanity of the everyday with something uniquely special.