Associate Professor Steve Mullins will be given access to a 120-page manuscript written by Andrew Goldie one fo the first Europeans to live at Port Moresby.Historian Steve Mullins is about to travel halfway around the world to the Isle of Cumbrae, near Glasgow in Scotland, to begin the task of unravelling an intriguing story of New Guinea's early colonial history.

In a small local museum off the coast of Scotland, he will be given access to a 120-page manuscript written by Andrew Goldie, probably in 1881.

Goldie was one of the first Europeans to live at Port Moresby and from 1875 until the late 1880s was the most significant collector of New Guinea natural history specimens and artefacts for Australian museums.

Goldie, apprenticed as a gardener back in Scotland, migrated to Auckland, New Zealand in 1862 where he spent 10 years working as a nurseryman. Later he was recruited to collect botanical specimens in the ‘South Seas' for a London nursery firm. In 1876, he shifted focus to the New Guinea south coast and continued collecting there until his death in 1891. Then his possessions, including the unfinished manuscript, were sent back to Millport, his Cumbrae hometown.

Associate Professor Mullins believes the Goldie manuscript is a unique window onto the past of the New Guinea south coast and Torres Strait and provides valuable information about the Goldie collections held in Australia, particularly the 130 or so  items in the Queensland Museum.

'Gabagaba collected by Goldie', North Ayrshire Museums.Assoc. Prof. Mullins, in collaboration with Queensland Museum, Glasgow Museum, North Ayrshire Museums and the University of Queensland, will bring Goldie's manuscript to life by editing a book which will include an annotated and illustrated version of the hand written manuscript, prefaced by a short biography of Goldie and an analysis of his collecting. It will also include a catalogue of the Queensland Museum pieces.

"Up until now, very little has been written about Goldie, and he is particularly interesting because he was a commercial rather than a scientific collector," Assoc. Prof. Mullins said.

"Because he opened Port Moresby's first trade store, Goldie knew everyone on the New Guinea south coast and by annotating his manuscript we hope to coherently link up their histories. He also gives us new descriptions of village life in both Torres Strait and New Guinea."

Unfortunately most of the ethnographic items supplied by Goldie to the Australian Museum in 1876 - 77 were destroyed in the Garden Palace fire of 1882. However, there are two collections in the Queensland Museum, one from 1880 and another from 1886, and some pieces in Cumbrae.