- 1 [Breed 'em tough, the old man says]
- 2 [Two years before he's learned to swim]
- 3 [Almost as bad is waiting in]
- 4 [Classy school but outta town]
- 5 [Five years hard of upland school,]
- 6 [And that is where he meets her first]
- 7 [Then suddenly he's in the '30s—]
- 8 [The manager's a man called Lloyd]
- 9 [By 1937 Hal]
- 10 [At twenty-two she is a virgin]
- 11 [The wedding makes the Easter Show]
- 12 [And so up north on Mitchell Downs]
- 13 [‘Forever’ moves on two years more.]
- 14 [The show is where they're at their best,]
- 15 [And so when Menzies sends,]
- 16 [But with the sinkings at Pearl Harbour,]
- 17 [Americans are everywhere]
- 18 [‘Private Mitchell, AIF’,]
- 19 [Hard enough to be a ‘Reo’]
- 20 [For Sal the days move on more slowly.]
- 21 [Up at Moresby life for Hal]
- 22 [1944, mid June,]
- 23 [Cyrus Furneaux, USN …]
- 24 [Three days in a single room]
- 25 [And back north up at Mitchell Downs]
- 26 [And Cyrus too is out at sea,]
- 27 [Townsville, Sally and the Clarence …]
- 28 [The welcome out at Mitchell Downs]
- 29 [Jesus Christ, how could you do it, Sal?]
- 30 [Not quite at ‘The Australia’ this time,]
- 31 [Three o'clock that afternoon]
- 32 [At three o'clock next afternoon]
- 33 [The Daylight heading north for Sal]
- 34 [But Perce can give no consolation.]
- 35 [Mr Symes is not too sharp]
- 36 [The war for Hal has settled down,]
- 37 [Meanwhile back on Mitchell Downs]
- 38 [One more birthday comes and goes.]
- 39 [Standing there with monkey board]
- 40 [In April 1945]
- 41 [Clarence winter—June, July—]
- 42 [Dear Hal,]
- 43 [Mrs Mitchell? Townsville calling.]
- 44 [‘The day off work’ is Tuesday next.]
- 45 [All afternoon the bedroom's waiting]
- 46 [Two whiskies each and one long year]
- 47 [Slowly now the world swims back,]
- 48 [On Tuesdays in the town's main street]
- 49 [Mrs Mitchell? Come on in.]
- 50 [A little problem with the womb.]
- 51 [There is a stretch of desk between them.]
- 52 [So life swings neatly back to normal—]
- 53 [As months slip into years and then]
- 54 [Shoot some semen in a bottle …]
- 55 [Pair of drunks, thinks Ida Whitby,]
- 56 [Sal's fortieth is not a date]
- 57 [The days somehow accelerate]
- 58 [Once just north of Copmanhurst]
- 59 [Then suddenly … the early '60s;]
- 60 [It isn't that Sal doesn't care.]
- 61 [September 1969,]
- 62 [Sally rides in after dark,]
- 63 [The inquest comes up six months later.]
- 64 [Ten years more she works the place,]
- 65 [Easy in her eighties now]