The previous two chapters focussed on the racial divisions by which the Papua New Guineans were kept ‘in line’ or ‘in their place’. In frontier societies, it was often felt there was no place for a white woman. White women spelled only trouble; they contaminated the masculine frontier and put the purity of the race at risk (in a way that men's broadcasting of their seed never seemed to). It was better that white women stayed at home, with the children. In time, colonial life became more settled, and some at least thought the presence of white women could add to its charm and amenities. But their potential for contamination persisted, and so a place was carved out for them.

India ‘was a man's world’ and memsahibs were required to fit themselves in and not appear too clever. Helen Callaway reports one of the ‘kindest’ hosts in West Africa confessing that he considered ‘women out of place in West Africa’, while the theme of ‘no place for a white woman’ forms the subject of two women's memoirs. Africa was ‘a man's country’ where a ‘man's job’ had to be done. It was peopled, if sparsely, by conquering soldiers, visionary empire-builders and intrepid explorers. Life there was the stuff of boys' adventure stories. Callaway suggests that men's memoirs celebrate a ‘lost masculine world’ similar to the frontier experience in Australia, New Zealand and America; a world that is or should be devoid of women.