Tim Winton has been publishing books for more than 40 years, but there's one that stands out.
Cloudstreet — recently voted Australia's favourite book in an ABC poll — was a defining moment in Winton's career, but it's a book that almost never was.
In the late 1980s, Winton was in Europe with his wife and young son.
"We were in transit carrying all our earthly goods, and we were catching a bus to the airport in Rome, and we got off the bus," he said.
"We were just going into the terminal, and just before we got to the glass doors, this Italian guy started tugging on my sleeve … he's really quite insistent," Winton recalls.
"I stopped eventually, and he was pointing back at the bus and … there was one little grey sports bag in there, and I just couldn't believe it. It was all the manuscripts, all the type scripts, all the carbon copies, all the notes, my entire novel to that point about to head off into Rome unaccompanied.
"If it hadn't been for just the decency of that guy … I could have kissed him because, in a way, he saved our lives because that was the book that saved our lives."