The Museum’s Oceania collections are internationally significant. Although not the largest – with around 10,000 items – it is extremely rich in early images and documentation. It includes a collection of photographs taken for C.F. Wood in Fiji, Samoa and the Ellice Islands in 1873, as well as a well-documented collection by William A.D. Acland from expeditions to Vanuatu and Samoa in the 1880s. The 19th-century material also includes examples from many important colonial photographers, such as Thomas Andrew in Samoa, Josiah Martin in New Zealand and the Dufty Brothers in Fiji. There is a group of images from the Burton Brothers’s 1885 'Coral Islands' series (from Fiji, Tonga and Samoa) with original stamped mounts. There are also important field collections by Diamond Jenness (Massim, 1911–12), A.C. Hocart (Fiji, c.1910), and Beatrice Blackwood in Papua New Guinea, New Britain and the Solomon Islands (1930s). The Museum also holds one of the most significant photograph and manuscript collections relating to the New Zealand guide and personality Makereti (1873–1930), who was associated with the Museum.
