Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Photographs
- Acknowledgements
- Maps of Papua New Guinea
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Passages to Papua New Guinea
- 2 Different Destinations
- 3 White Women in Papua New Guinea: Relative Creatures?
- 4 In Town and Down the Road
- 5 War, a Watershed in Race Relations?
- 6 The Civilising Mission
- 7 Matters of Sex
- 8 Making a Space for Women
- Appendix 1 Biographical Notes
- Appendix 2 Key Events in Chronological Order
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Glossary
- Index
1 - Passages to Papua New Guinea
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Photographs
- Acknowledgements
- Maps of Papua New Guinea
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Passages to Papua New Guinea
- 2 Different Destinations
- 3 White Women in Papua New Guinea: Relative Creatures?
- 4 In Town and Down the Road
- 5 War, a Watershed in Race Relations?
- 6 The Civilising Mission
- 7 Matters of Sex
- 8 Making a Space for Women
- Appendix 1 Biographical Notes
- Appendix 2 Key Events in Chronological Order
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Glossary
- Index
Summary
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
Mum says what she remembered most of all when waiting on the wharf at Kavieng for stuff to come off the ship, she smelled this weird horrible smell: ‘What's that dreadful smell?’ And this man beside her, Bill Garnett who planted Kamiraba later, said ‘Madam, you're smelling money’. (Stale sweepings of copra in the shed!)
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.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Australian Women in Papua New GuineaColonial Passages 1920–1960, pp. 7 - 38Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992
- 1
- Cited by