It was set in the last two weeks of the 1970s and Ellis called it his farewell to "the Whitlam decade".
[2] According to one account the play "explores some of the preoccupations at the start of the 1980s, including Nostradamus, embassy kidnappings, and the women's movement.
"[3] Ellis said "it is set in Palm Beach in those peculiar two weeks last Christmas when bushfires were surrounding Sydney, the sky was dark and apocalyptic, Tito's death seemed to make a Russian invasion of Yugoslavia likely; meanwhile they were really invading Afghanistan, there was the hostage crisis and there were cheerful headlines saying 'Countdown to World War III'.
"[6] At Palm Beach, a writer whose wife and child are away entertains a girl from the public service and is visited by a poet friend.
A female journalist who aborted her baby to the writer also visits.