Death Takes a Holiday

Like the play it helped spawn, the '60s snapshot is remarkable for its ordinariness. Against a sand dune the young family sit: mother in straw hat and Dame Edna glasses; a bronzed, bare-chested father holding his knee; their son dressed in a tropical shirt squinting at the sun. The latter is Michael Gow aged 6, holidaying near Ulladulla on the New South Wales south coast, though that's about all the Australian playwright can remember. "In my memory, Christmas holidays went from about 1959 to 1970," recalls Gow, 51. "There's just this kind of weird dream."

From that dazzle...