'A Paradise of the Gods. Writings and Drawings of Handley Bathurst Sterndale’ (2020) is an unpublished digital edition edited by J.J. Overell. In 1870, Handley Bathurst Sterndale worked as a surveyor on the island of Upolu, Samoa, for the German trading company Goddefroy & Sohn. In this capacity, he made an expedition across Upolu, making notes and sketches about the journey as he went. In 1871, on Motu Kotawa on the islet of Pukapuka atoll in the Cook Islands, he worked these notes into the manuscript ‘Upolu; or, A Paradise of the Gods’, and worked his sketches into finished drawings. Some accounts are not his first hand observations and others are demonstrably wrong. Sterndale sought to have the manuscript published, but was unsuccessful in finding a publisher before his death in 1878. After his death, it was listed in a catalogue among the publications of Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington of London, but the manuscript never made it to print. It is now available as PMB MS 1442.

The original notebooks have since been lost, but the surviving manuscript and drawings have been passed down to Sterndale’s descendants. This collection brings together 73 of Sterndale's drawings of Samoa, Cook Islands and other islands of the Pacific. The images were digitised by photographer Rod Howe. The images are of scenes witnessed or imagined on his journey, including plants and animals, people, nature and village life.

Photographs taken during Dorothy Crozier’s fieldwork in Tonga as an ANU Research Scholar. Photographs include school children; Tongan funerary customs; medical injections; buildings and people.

This collection of 52 photographs records a visit to Fiji and Tonga in January/February 1975 by Bill and Jan Gammage. The visit was to see friends and look around.
Of Fiji, there are 28 photos. The subjects include: Nadi, Man Friday Hotel near Korolevu on the south coast of Viti Levu, Suva, and Levuka on the Ovalau Islands.
Of Tonga, 24 photos were taken. The subjects include in and around Kolovai, Sione and Ruth Latukefu's home, Nuku'alofa on the north coast including the Royal Palace, Orahaei Beach near caves and a boat connected to the Minerva Reefs incident, the blowholes and the Triithon.

Photographs relating to Tonga from the papers of Reverend Shirley W. Baker and Beatrice Baker.
The Reverend Shirley Waldemar Baker (1836-1903) was an English Wesleyan missionary who arrived in Tonga from Australia in 1860. During his stay of more than 30 years, Baker became a close adviser to King Tupou I and, like the King, an active promoter of Tonga’s independence in the face of European colonial expansion in the south Pacific. Baker’s many disputes with other Europeans in Tonga, most notably with his fellow missionary James Moulton, and especially with the British government officials in Fiji and elsewhere, generated a degree of controversy unique among 19th-century missionaries working in the Pacific. His metamorphosis into a politician culminated in his appointment as Premier of Tonga. (John Spurway, ‘Baker Papers’, Journal of Pacific History, 38:2, 2003.)

These papers of Rev. Shirley and Beatrice Baker were bequeathed to the Mitchell Library by Dorothy Crozier along with her own research papers. They were transferred from the Mitchell Library to the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau in August 2001. Lillian Baker, a daughter of Shirley Baker who lived in Ha’apai, gave the papers to Dorothy Crozier in 1950 when Ms Crozier was researching culture change in Tonga under the supervision of Professor Raymond Firth