Dungatar is a fictitious town in rural Australia, small and isolated. As the town stores the great grain silos, neighbouring towns must often transport their grain to Dungatar to be stored and freighted. The people of Dungatar are aware that their behaviour is on show to the visitors from the surrounding townspeople and hence, make every attempt to be presentable and amiable. Dungatar is the focal point of the neighbouring towns (Winyerp and Itheca), and these neighbours are rivals in both football and life, and as it turns out, eventually on the stage as well.

Beneath the gaze of The Hill, where Molly and Tilly reside, the rest of the town is laid out with the houses gathered into the bend of the creek that ‘had always been low, choked with willows and cumbungi weed…the flow sluggish’ (Part 1). The Dunnage household overlooks the rest of the town and acts as a reminder to the townsfolk that they live among outcasts, while at the same time affording both Tilly and Molly the opportunity to observe and comment on the secular personalities existing in the town below. This vantage point, both literally and metaphorically, allow Tilly to see the townspeople for who they really are. The community buildings (the Post Office, Pratt’s Merchant Store, the Police Station, the Station Hotel and the Chemist) run along the spine of a thin gravel road that runs to the ‘green eye’ of the football oval.