[1][2] "The scene is a small sugar: port in Queensland, and when the play begins, there's a ship in the harbor waiting to load.
Time's short, but Sid Brady, the head of the Cargo Dumper's Union, doesn't care — he's carving a career for himself by making trouble.
His target is Harold Barker, a long-suffering Englishman, who is inclined to think that the biggest mistake he ever made was to come to Australia.
"[3] Leslie Rees wrote "To some over-sensitive unionists the play appeared as a provocative and unnecessary attack on cherished rights and dignities, but other viewers saw in it equally amusing gibes at arbitration, employers, strikes, union bosses, and Englishmen forced to be Australians.
The flaw in this farce comes from its unchanging device of frustration in a chess-like game of check and counter-check between wily union leader and panic-stricken employer while the ten burly ‘workers’ cheer from the side-lines.