Andrew Tink, once the attorney-general in waiting, began his first intensive radiation treatment for throat cancer. But while his health may have prevented him realising his political dream of serving as part of the O'Farrell cabinet, it didn't stop him achieving another one: being a published author. Through his first battle with prostate cancer, he completed his first book, a biography on colonial explorer, land owner and politician William Charles Wentworth. During his second battle, this time with throat cancer, he completed his second biography: Lord Sydney: the Life and Times of Tommy Townshend, published today. It's the first biography of the man after whom Sydney Cove was named in 1788 - an astonishing hole, now filled. Having got through the worst of his recovery, Tink, now some 20 kilograms lighter than he was before his treatment, is giving speeches, with the occasional aid of a small blue drinking bottle filled with water. The treatment gave him third-degree burns to the inside of his throat, making it impossible to swallow for some time. He told the Herald's Anna Patty that, apart from his wife and family, the one thing that kept him going was his appearance at the Sydney Writers' Festival in May this year, just after his final session of radiation treatment. ''Through the whole of my treatment I was saying to the oncologist, 'I want to make my commitments at the Writers' Festival - please let me have enough of a voice and enough of a brain.' That became my goal.''
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