It’s wine country: a privileged young man, Jack, has been killed driving back to Perth from his parents’ beach house.Tim Winton (Cloudstreet) is one of Australia’s greatest contemporary writers. No one writes with a more evocative sense of place, conjuring up the very essence of his many West Australian settings.

For Shrine, we journey to the rocky headlands of the south coast of Western Australia, between a forest and the sea.

Exploring the aftermath of a tragic event, we follow those Jack left behind. But as always with Winton, it is impossible to separate the mythology of the landscape and the ghosts that inhabit it from the stories of those left behind.

Starring John Howard and directed by Black Swan’s artistic director, Kate Cherry, Shrine is the third play Winton and Cherry have collaborated on, following the success of Rising Water and Signs of Life.

With a story by a literary great, direction by an artist with theatre in her genes and a top drawer cast Black Swan’s Shrine is the perfect celebration of West Australian culture for Canberra’s centenary.