View early Colonial Office photos in Australasia through a lens

View early Colonial Office photos in Australasia through a lens

25 January 2013

The National Archives has released online thousands of early photographs and drawings of Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga and other Pacific Islands.

Just in time for Australia Day on 26 January, you can now view images of Australian towns, buildings, landmarks and people dating back as far as the mid 19th century.

The photographs have been uploaded to the photo-sharing website Flickr so that you can tag and contribute comments and suggestions to help improve the descriptions.

The images are taken from the Colonial Office's photographic collection (CO 1069) and highlights include:

rarely-seen panorama of Sydney harbour taken in 1870 

the Garden Palace in Sydney, photographed in 1880 before its destruction by fire

views of Melbourne Cricket Ground (M.C.G) and St Paul's Cathedral in 1912

street scenes of Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth at the turn of the century

photographic views of Tasmania in 1870

album depicting the arrival of the first Governor General in Australia

coloured paintings of New Zealand by naturalist George French Angas

early 20th century photographs of Wellington, Auckland and Dunedin

five volumes of photographs of Papua New Guinea from 1885

Find out more about the project and images on our blog.

You can also look back at our earlier 'through a lens' projects, including Asia, the Americas and Africa, which have attracted hundreds of thousands of online visitors and resulted in thousands of additional user-generated descriptions.