In the years before Papua New Guinea became independent, Michael O'Connor was for nine years a district administrator - a kiap - in remote parts of one of the planet's most forbidding environments. His is a story not only of the extension of law and order and the development of representative government but also of the experience of his young family in a fascinating world. It is a story of life that lacked any kind of modern facilities in isolated areas where travel was mostly on foot through mosquito-ridden swamps to freezing mountain ridges. Above all, it is a story of a people whose material poverty was overlaid with their friendship and good humor.