Although a few white Australian women have been born in Papua New Guinea and indeed spent all or most of their lives there, the great majority lived in the Territory for only a few years. For most expatriate women, Papua New Guinea was a passage in their lives, a brief moment, usually of their adulthood, after growing up and before growing old. Fewer women took passage to the Territory of their own initiative than went with husbands, or in some cases with parents. Nevertheless, going to Papua New Guinea was still a choice to relocate in another country. All those women who went before the Second World War also shared a passage out of Papua and New Guinea, the evacuation of women and children as the Japanese invaded. This chapter explores these passages to and from the Territory, comparing them with the adventure travels, tropical romances and mission tracts which had lured them northwards.

First impressions

For Pat Murray's mother this was a pungent irony. She had convinced her husband to leave their Queensland property and buy an expropriated German plantation in New Guinea.