'Sissy had never been on a holiday and didn't know a child on her street or a classmate at Sacred Heart School who'd travelled much further than the local swimming pool. At best they'd enjoyed a tram ride to a picture theatre in the city, maybe once or twice a year. A girl in the same year at school, Ruby Allison who lived behind the dry-cleaners with her mother and two older brothers, came back to school after the previous summers holidays and told a story that she had been to the ocean over summer.' (Introduction)