When the natural history collector, explorer and trader Andrew Goldie died at Millport, Scotland, in 1891 he left an unfinished handwritten 120-page memoir of his first four years in New Guinea, from 1875 to 1879. The memoir, reproduced here, describes Goldie’s early career as a commercial natural history collector. Thoroughly annotated, and including where he indicated in the text an excerpt published from his diary in 1876 and the scientific descriptions of two plants, it offers a rare window on to life on the southeast coast of New Guinea and in Torres Strait in the era immediately before those regions were separated to become parts of different colonies. The annotated memoir also contains a photograph of Goldie’s 1877 expedition, a hand drawn expedition map, three sketches by James Shaw, one of Goldie’s party, and two newspaper illustrations of scenes described in the memoir. The memoir text is reproduced as faithfully as possible to the original, although some of Goldie’s minor textual corrections have not been retained.