Sexual anxiety, bordering on panic, in the Australian colonial town of Port Moresby - 'Port' - during the 1920s is the theme of this book. Port Moresby was more white, more Protestant, more homogeneous than comparable towns like Darwin or Rabaul. Its Papuan inhabitants were considered low on the ladder of civilisation and were despised for trying to climb up it. At the same time they were feared. Liaison with a black, demeaning to a white man, was regarded as defilement to a white woman, and the Papuans were believed to be primitives, unable to control their sexual appetites.