Temporal setting: 1969-1972
Location notes:
Phillip Parsons writes in the introductory essay to Currency Press' Travelling North that 'Williamson's Melbourne is very noticeably full of babies and clucky mothers, while death haunts the paradisal imagery of the tropic north. If Melbourne is associated with the diminished life of winter, it is because the world it represents – the world of business, of buying and selling, of marrying and giving in marriage, of babies and the daily domestic round – is to be seen as less than fully vital. In the midst of life we are in Melbourne. And if the paradisal north is associated with renewed and heightened life, it also means dying. To move from Melbourne to the tropics means to pass from one dimension to another' (xii-xiii).
Temporal setting: 1969
Location notes:
The play begins with Frank and Frances at a seaside camping site in North Queensland. Dialogue indicates that they are south of Townsville. Bundaberg is an approximation.
Temporal setting: 1972
Location notes:
Frank and Frances get married in Sydney towards the end of the play, and go to the gallery preview of artist Brett Whitely.
Temporal setting: 1969-1972
Quotes
“The new cottage. We know immediately we are near the tropics by the changes in lighting and scenery. Our first glimpse of the place shows it to be a wreck.”
(p. Act One, Sc. 7)
“Saul: Mr Frank Brown?
Frank: That's right.
Saul: My name is Saul Morgenstein. You're new to the district.
Frank: Comparatively. I've been here two months.
Saul: I've been here eight years and I'm still regraded as a newcomer [...].”
(p. Act One, Sc. 9)
