While colonial accounts of tensions between mission, plantation and administration abound, there was also a difference between those who lived in the administrative centres and those who lived ‘down the road’ (as it was called in New Guinea). In town a self-referential white society was possible, at least after a certain stage of settlement. The top echelons of the administration sought to preserve a decorum (like the ‘Raj’ as Isabel Platten describes it), that was not possible for those living with lesser incomes or amenities. White people living down the road were far more likely to become involved in the life of local villagers, in relationships standing somewhere between feudal and reciprocal exchanges. Pat Murray, Mary Pulsford, and Joyce Walker all lived ‘down the road’ at some stage during their time in Papua New Guinea. For Mary Pulsford and Joyce Walker, this was a special experience. It allowed them to become acquainted with a life and people very different from their own, and additionally, in Joyce Walker's case, as yet untouched by white customs.

Outwomen

While Evelyn Cheeseman tells the sad tale of Mrs Field who died in a mental home in Australia because she ‘lacked the will to become acclimatised to solitude’ the story that circulated in Papua New Guinea concerned poor Mr Field and his misfortune in such an unsuitable wife: