In 1926, she resigned as Insect Curator and affiliated herself, unpaid, with the natural history department of the British Museum (now the Natural History Museum). She spent most of the next twelve years on expeditions, travelling to New Guinea, the New Hebrides and other islands in the Pacific Ocean. In New Guinea she made a collecting expedition to the coastal area between Aitape and Jayapura (known as Hollandia at the time) and visited the nearby Cyclop Mountains.Tuzin, Donald F. (1997) 'The Cassowary's Revenge: the life and death of masculinity in a New Guinea society’ University of Chicago Press, p. 86 She treated indigenous populations with respect, learning from them, and was known in the islands as ‘the woman who walks’ and ‘the lady of the mountains’. In her writings she recorded indigenous ways of life that few outsiders had ever seen, and that were beginning to disappear even in her time.
