A global trade in specimens of nature, living or preserved, peaked during the nineteenth century, fuelled by developments in science, trends in fashion and simple curiosity. The trade involved a diverse set of players – among them, amateur and professional scientists, institutions, auctioneers, shop-front dealers, field-collectors, explorers, settler colonists, seamen and indigenous people – and it connected a web of buyers and sellers in Britain, Europe and North America with others in far-flung locations across the world. Social and ethnic differences among suppliers and buyers, the vast distances often separating them, pricing uncertainties associated with specimens of nature, and the potential dangers faced in sourcing them, all meant that acquiring contacts and building trust at home and abroad were important for success in the specimen trade.

In order to explore the importance of these trust networks and the manner in which they were constructed, this paper sharpens the focus from the global to the individual and local, directing its attention to the network-building efforts of particular specimen dealers and commercial field-collectors, based in urban centres in colonial Australia or working beyond the fringe of settlement.