The papers are the residue of those presented to the Public Library of Victoria, Melbourne, by Sir William Flinders Petrie (1853-1942). They consist of three main groups: the first, the papers of Flinders himself, are charts and original journals, 1791, 1793 to 1794 and 1796, and copies, 1798, 1801 to 1803; narratives of his voyages; service papers, 1797 to 1810, and technical notes on subjects in which he was particularly interested, such as terrestrial magnetism; there is a wide range of original correspondence including letters from Sir Joseph Banks and Sir John Franklin (q.v.). Mrs Flinders' papers make up the second group: these consist mainly of letters, 1799 to 1812, including those from Flinders written during the Investigator's voyage, 1801 to 1803, and correspondence with French residents in Mauritius about her husband's captivity. The final group is Professor Flinders Petrie's collection of biographical material, notes, memoirs, newscuttings, etc, on his grandfather's career and correspondence with J.F. Shillinglaw about a biography of Flinders, which work Shillinglaw failed to complete.

Related Material
For online transcripts of 150 documents taken from the Flinders Collection, follow the link:

The Flinders papers: letters and documents about the explorer Matthew Flinders (1774-1814) - https://flinders.rmg.co.uk/
Archived snapshots of the site are also available via the Internet Archive and the UK Web Archive.

The transcripts are mostly letters but do also include other official documents. The coverage is not comprehensive but does provide a good support to the main body of letters written by Flinders.