‘Cloudstreet’ – The House

1. ‘Cloudstreet’ – The House BY Aiden Frediani and Mitchell Seaman

2. Significance of the house at no. 1 Cloudstreet • The House on Cloud Street provides refuge for the economically unstable pickles and a new start for the hardy Lambs • Represents how the spirits of Aboriginals past stay with the land long after their passing • The Lambs originally didn’t feel welcome into the house, felt like they were intruding on someone else's property (Excluding the Pickles’) • The house itself is a metaphor for white Australia and the takeover of Aboriginal lands. • Oriel and Lester don’t feel connected to the land. This shows them in an aboriginal context as they believe that they don’t own the land but the land owns them.

3. The spirits • The House on Cloud Street is haunted by two ghosts: • A young Aboriginal Girl, victim of Stolen Generation who poisoned herself. Due to the loss of her land. • An elderly white woman who was the previous owner of the house and kept Aboriginal women victimized by the Stolen Generation in her house (1 Cloud Street) Died on Piano, playing a constant droning middle C. She died alone after evicting the remaining Aboriginal Women. • Such Spirits had kept Oriel out and away from the house • The Spirits are seen by Fish, Sam, Lester, Dolly and Quick. • The Spirits haunt the library which Fish spends most of his time in constantly playing middle C, it also later became Quick and Roses room while Rose was pregnant. • When Wax Harry is born in the library the darkness of the spirits diminishes and they disappear, as Wax Harry represents new life, love and light.

4. Significance Of Location • Located near the coast, water is seen as both the giver at taker of life. Healing and hindering the characters in the novel. • Close by to ‘Cloudstreet’ was the swan river. A significant location in the area of Fremantle and in the novels plot as there is the death of Fish who drowns in the river while at a picnic with the two families of the Pickles and Lambs.