The series consists of a variety of photographic material relating to Nauru, Ocean Island, Christmas Island and British Phosphate Commissioners (BPC) property in Australia. The British Phosphate Commissioners mined phosphate on Nauru and Ocean Island and acted as managing agent on Christmas Island, also mining there, on behalf of the Christmas Island Phosphate Commission (CIPC) [CA 6799].
The series provides an informative photographic record of the settlements and total mining operation on each island. It includes places of interest, scenery, terrain, towns, land and sea and air transport, mining plant and activity. There are photographs of workers, management, island administrators, visitors and events of particular significance. The construction of new houses, office and administrative buildings, wharves, cantilevers and the reconstruction following Japanese occupation of some islands is depicted.
Some items in the series were created by BPC staff as a direct record of the Commission's activities. Other collections were acquired from time to time from visitors to the island and, in one instance, from a journalist - Mr Thomas J. McMahon, who wrote articles about the islands. Others which date from before the formation of BPC were acquired from the previous mining companies and provide an extensive record from the time when phosphate mining on Ocean Island was first investigated.
Under the BPC the Engineer on each island was responsible for the total island's operation and would arrange for photographs of the area under his jurisdiction. These were sent to Melbourne and placed in standard albums as the 'official' photographs. These albums were green for Nauru, brown for Christmas Island and burgundy for Ocean Island, leather bound, with the island name and volume number embossed on the spine. The photographs are mostly secured inside the albums, numbered and annotated. In many cases a list of contents is held inside the cover of each volume. Other volumes of varying size have mainly brown or black cardboard covers. The run of official photographs is now held as R32/1. Negatives identified as relating to them are located in R32/10 although the collection is not complete. Copies of some prints were mounted in a separate run of albums now held as R32/12.
Other material in this series includes loose black and white and colour prints, negatives, slides and transparencies on a variety of subjects. These have been grouped by National Archives into consignments relating to particular islands or are grouped by media. Prior to the cessation of the BPC's phosphate mining in July 1981, and in anticipation of the transfer of records, the photograph collections were brought together by the BPC Librarian into the one series, the volumes being arranged by single number runs under each island, and the previously unnumbered volumes, numbered from 101. Following the initial collation of the photographs other books and individual prints have been found and added to the collection.
Originally five consignments of this series were transferred to the custody of National Archives, the first containing the albums. Once in custody, certain negatives in consignments 5 and 6 were found to be silver nitrate. Accordingly, all negatives in these consignments were removed, and those confirmed as nitrate were isolated and copies made. The original nitrate negatives were destroyed and the copies relocated in the present consignment 9. The other, non-nitrate, negatives were placed in the present consignment 6.
Further arrangement and description of this series was undertaken by National Archives which resulted in a reordering of its items. The present division of items and the allocation of consignments of this series is as follows:
R32/1 Official photograph albums
R32/2 Christmas Island photographs - loose
R32/3 Nauru photographs - loose
R32/4 Ocean Island photographs - loose
R32/5 Sundry photgraphs - loose
R32/6 Black and white negatives - general and those removed from
items in R32/3 and R32/5
R32/9 Copies of nitrate negatives removed from items in R32/3
to R32/5
R32/10 Black and white negatives of photograpns in items of R32/1
R32/11 Black and white glass negatives
R32/12 Copies of photographs in items of R32/1
R32/13 Full page negatives of photographs from albums CIPC 1-10 and CIPC NN from R32/1
R32/14 Individual negatives of photographs from albums CIPC 1-10 and CIPC NN from R32/1
R32/15 Individual negatives of photographs from albums CIPC 1-10 and CIPC NN from R32/1 (second copy, identical to R32/14)
R32/16 Copy prints of photographs from albums CIPC 1-10 and CIPC NN from R32/1
Note that there are no consignments 7 or 8. As at November 1994 there were item lists for all the consignments listed above except R32/9.
Items in R32/1 and R32/12 have retained, as much as possible, their original control symbols prior to their renumbering by the BPC Librarian. As there is not a comprehensive system of arrangement for the entire series, control symbols in the form of single numbers with alpha prefixes have been imposed on most items to form discrete sequences for each consignment. Items in consignment 2 have been allocated a C prefix for Christmas Island, those in 3 an N prefix for Nauru, in 4 an O prefix for Ocean Island, in 5 an S prefix for Sundry, and 11 a G prefix for Glass Negative. Items in consignment 6 have been allocated a prefix of NEG for Negative where the negatives could not be identified as applying to prints in other consignments. However, where negatives were removed from items in other consignments to be relocated in consignment 6 they have retained the control number of their item of origin. That is, negatives removed from item [S24] of R32/5 are similarly identified as item [S24] in R32/6. In the same way, where items in consignment /10 have been identified as pertaining to items in R32/1 they have been assigned the control symbols of those items in R32/1.
In the years 2002-2003 extensive preservation work was carried out on photographs in R32. Loose photographs in consignments 2, 3, 4 and 5 were placed into archival quality image portfolios, while photographs in consignments 1 and 12 were removed from their original albums and placed in image portfolios also.
British Phosphate Commission