b'169Ex 11721172 and reports (some of which originals) related to the activities SOLOMON ISLANDS PLANTATION SYSTEM/LEGACY OFof Levers Pacific Plantations in that era. Notable among BLACKBIRDING: An extraordinary archive of photographsthese are Frederick Godsons original 1908 employment by Frederick Godson, who during his employment withcontract with the company, as well as an original 1925 copy Levers Pacific Plantations from 1908 in the Solomon Islandsof The Australever company magazine, in which chairman produced this group of two hundred and forty-five images.Joseph Meeks farewell speech is reproduced, in which he is The collection documents local dress, body modification,reported to have stated: The Solomon Islands at that time fishing, and burial practices, as well as the working dynamicwere practically all virgin forest.The natives were very little whereby locals worked under the direction of white overseers.advanced from cannibalism and from head-hunting.I may say Several images of men bearing rifles testify to the tensionsthese Plantations and the troubles incident there-to may have of the time - Godson was active in the Solomons not longmade my hair whiter (pp. 5-6).after the 1901 Pacific Island Labourers Act, which broughtThe Legion of Frontiersmen, a patriotic paramilitary the practice of blackbirding to an end with the forcedorganisation based in London, was formed in 1905 by Boer repatriation of thousands of Solomon Islanders from a numberWar veteran Roger Pocock. Intended to serve the British of Queensland sugarcane farms. Also of note are severalEmpire as a volunteer field intelligence corps, its membership photographs documenting the contemporary presence ofdwindled due to casualties incurred during the First World War, members of the Legion of Frontiersmen in the Solomonand excessive secrecy and internal division have prevented it to Islands. (245 photographs) this day from effectively fulfilling its stated aims.The photographic portion of this archive consists of three$10,00015,000albums that together contain one hundred and sixty six photographs (some of which in the form of real-photo1173postcards), six 30 x 45cm boards with sixty-three photographsABORIGINAL & OTHER SUBJECTS, circa 1908 - 1920s, affixed, and eighteen additional loose photographs. Theincluding the construction of the railway track between images are complemented by an extensive amount ofAdelaide and Perth: gelatin and glass negatives and a quantity contextual annotations that have been added by membersof later prints from the negatives. (100s).of Godsons family. This explanatory material is further augmented by the inclusion of a large amount of records$1,0002,000'