Fred Palmer Archer was born in Melbourne in 1890 and died in 1977. He was with the first Australian Imperial Force, came to New Guinea in 1923 and later took over Jame Plantation, Buka Passage, in the Bougainville District of the Territory of New Guinea. Jame Plantation was one of the ex-German plantations sold by the Commonwealth Government in 1926/27 to returned soldiers. He was appointed a civilian coast watcher in the Buka-Bougainville area at the outbreak of the War in the Pacific and evacuated to Guadalcanal and then Australia in 1943. He joined the British Solomon Islands Defence Force in September 1943 and transferred to ANGAU in early 1945. After the War he returned to his plantations in New Guinea where he became one of the Territory’s most successful and influential planters.

The papers include: letters from Fred Archer to his family and friends, mainly from Wuvulu Island, Manus District, and from Jame Plantation in Buka, 1923-1928; Report on coast watching activitiy, Bougainville Island, 1941-1943, by W J Read; Archer’s Solomon Islands war-diaries, 1943. There is also a series of subject files, A-Z, arranged by Mrs Mary Roberts from the Archer papers for her biography of Fred Archer. The files cover many aspects of Archer’s post-War career, including some material on the Planters Association of Bougainville and the history of the Planters Association of New Guinea. A series of files of correspondence and other documents relating to Hakau Plantation in Bougainville, 1935-1967, is also microfilmed.

See Finding aids for details.