Photographic images are useful tools for environmental historians and have their place alongside the official documents generated by environmental regulators and managers, and the unofficial written observations and oral testimonies of everyday citizens attuned to their natural surroundings.The Historical Coastlines project developed an historical image and manuscript archive illustrative and informative of physical environmental change in the Fitzroy River estuary and on the Capricorn Coast. The archive was compiled as a first port of call for individuals, scientists and community groups who, for instance, might be interested in researching historical change in specific locations, or baseline biophysical data, or to demonstrate land use patterns, illustrate cultural continuities, or simply to satisfy their curiosity about the past states and uses of these local environments.The photographs in the Historical Coastlines archive were taken for the most part over the past 130 years by residents of the Rockhampton/Capricorn Coast region for their own pleasure, usually to capture and preserve memories of pleasant scenes and happy holidays.The image archive, collected, initially from institutional repositories, in particular the Capricornia Collection of the CQU Library, the Rockhampton and District Historical Society collection, the Emu Park Historical Museum collection, and the Capricorn Coast Historical Society collection, contains 764 photographs. As part of the project local historians also undertook the laborious and time-consuming process of accurately identifying and dating the images.