For the first eight years of Ron's life the Grainer family lived in Mt Mulligan, a small town built around the extraction of coal from three seams which lay beneath a 400-metre-high sandstone monolith, located 100 km west of Cairns. Apart from the industrial noise and dust, the family sometimes had to contend with the after effects of a high consumption of alcohol by the shift miners. On one such occasion a stray bullet flew through the roof of their home and almost hit the 11-week-old Ron as he lay on his bed.