The Burns Philp Collection

Anyone under 50 probably associates Burns Philp with finance matters but there was a time when the varied ships of the company serviced much of the South Pacific. The well-known ships included BULOLO and MALAITA but there were scores of others over more than 100 years. The BP fleet included many seagoing ships about the same size as the luxury cruisers of Sydney 2010 but they worked for a living and provided a good living for their mainly native crews. Many were wrecked and others were sunk during the Japanese advance in WW2.

For costs and availability of obtaining any of these photos without watermark, as an electronic file, as a print from the original negative (where available) or as some other format, contact the Maritime Records and Research Centre’s Curator on 02 9298 3850 or email:mrrc@shf.org.au/home, quoting the full file name and giving details of format wanted.

Copyright for the majority of these images from the collection is vested in the Sydney Heritage Fleet. For the remaining images every attempt has been made to ensure correct attribution. If any originator of an image notes an error the Sydney Heritage Fleet would welcome any notification and will remove that image or modify its attribution.

Click on any image to enlarge