Travis was taken home to South Alligator, where George supervised a uranium mine. A sorry collection of corrugated iron five hundred miles from Darwin, and perhaps another thousand from the twentieth century. George and Mary Frances had already sired a son, Harry, eighteen months earlier. But after Travis, Mary Frances had a series of miscarriages. Later she would blame high levels of radiation for her malfunctioning womb, but the immediate fallout was a six year gap between Travis and his sister Sally... ...and a mother who spent most of her waking hours horizontal.

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