Historical photographs

The museum holds several historical photographic collections. These include:

Departmental photo collection—more than 20,000 images of agriculture, urban development and industry throughout Queensland captured by the former Department of Lands and its later iterations over a 150-year span (1860 to 2010).
Surveying slide collection—more than 500 photos taken in the 1970s and 80s as departmental staff resurveyed historically significant surveys of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. This includes the border surveys and Sweers Island which was visited by Matthew Flinders in 1802.
Museum composite collection—photos and scans individually collected by the museum and arranged by subject matter, such as Survey Corps, instruments, marks, precision surveys, transport, camps and people. This collection currently contains around 6,000 images.

Sunmap collection

The Sunmap collection contains more than 550 photographs, the oldest dating from the 1860s, depicting the early history and settlement of Queensland. It comprises photographs taken by state government photographers, donations from private collections, and photographs from the John Oxley historical archive.

Examples of images from the collection include:

Brisbane
regional centres (e.g. Allora, Bundaberg, Cairns, Charters Towers, Cooktown, Maryborough, Mt. Morgan, Toowoomba, Townsville and Warwick)
rural scenes (e.g. pioneer men and women, horse-drawn harvesting and threshing machines, bullock teams).

The photographs were mostly captured on 8 inch x 10 inch (203mm x 254mm) glass plate negatives which have been copied to film then digitised to ensure preservation of the original negatives.

Last updated: 01 April 2026
Last reviewed: 01 April 2026