Borrow Collection

The Collection of Keith Travers Borrow (1917-2005) on the early history of European settlement in South Australia.

The collection contains more than 2000 books and serials, and approximately 65 metres of archival material, paintings, prints, maps, manuscripts, photographs, audiotapes, and card indexes.

The collection of Mr Borrow’s wife Eleanor Yelland is included in the Borrow Collection.

The Borrow Collection is held in Special Collections, Level 3, Central Library, Flinders University.

Conditions of access

For more information, contact the Library.

Featured links:

Some Early Recollections by Boyle Travers Finniss: transcript of 46-page manuscript held in the Borrow Collection.

Boyle Travers Finniss was Assistant Surveyor to Colonel William Light when the colony of South Australia was set up in 1836. In his 'Recollections', written in 1882, he describes early encounters with the Aborigines, early settler life, the political and social life of the colony, the progress of surveying and building the city of Adelaide, and his own career which included a term as the first Premier of South Australia under responsible government.

Early Experiences in Australasia: Primary Sources and Personal Narratives 1788-1901

Flinders University staff and students now have access to Early Experiences in Australasia, which provides a personal view of events in the region from the arrival of the first settlers through to Australian Federation at the close of the nineteenth century. This unique database provides first-person accounts, including letters and diaries, narratives, and other primary source materials.

As Flinders University Library was the first institution to contribute to the Archive, almost all the material currently included in the collection is drawn from our very own Borrow Collection. Come to Special Collections to see the originals of these precious documents

Search

Go to the Borrow Collection in findit@flinders. (Add additional search terms in the search box to search within the collection)

Go to photographs in the Borrow Collection in findit@flinders. (Add additional search terms in the search box to search within the collection)

Biography

Keith Travers Borrow (1917-2005) had a life-long interest in the early history of European settlement in South Australia, and was for many years the President of the Pioneers’ Association, an organisation made up of descendants of the pioneers who arrived during the first decade after Adelaide’s establishment in 1836. His father, Travers Borrow, was co-founder of the Association.

The Pioneers’ Association has published a long-running series of pamphlets on topics of interest to South Australian historians, and Mr Borrow was the author of many of these publications. (See their website for a list of publications, copies of all of which are included in the Borrow Collection.) His great-grandfather was Boyle Travers Finniss (1807-1893), one of Colonel Light’s surveyors and later the first Premier of the Colony under responsible government.

Mr Borrow’s wife Eleanor Yelland was another keen historical researcher, author of several publications including Colonists, Copper and Corn in the Colony of South Australia 1850-51, and Flinders University Library also holds her collection of books and papers. They were married in 1973.

The Borrow Collection is immense and varied, and contains many significant items. Apart from Mr Borrow’s correspondence and research notes, there are historical and family letters and photographs, B.T. Finniss’s notebooks, genealogical information on many of South Australia’s founding families, prints and portraits, tapes of interviews with descendants of historical figures, and more than 2000 books and periodicals, including rare antiquarian volumes and early colonial newspapers.