Among the first of the long series of commissions of inquiry ordered by the British government in the wake of the Napoleonic War was Commissioner John Thomas Bigge’s extensive investigation into the colony of New South Wales (including Van Diemen’s Land). As we approach the 200^th anniversary of the ‘Bigge Inquiry’, it is time for new investigations of the methods and legacies of this landmark moment in Australian history. That should begin with a re-examination of the vast and extraordinary body of evidence collected by Bigge – some twenty-four bound volumes of documents, correspondence, memorials and scores of oral ‘examinations’ that were appended to the reports but never published. Once considered ‘strictly confidential’ and closely guarded by the Colonial Office, historians have accessed these appendices mostly via the monumental transcription projects undertaken in the late-nineteenth century, but there has never been a comprehensive and methodical exploration of their content. Such an analysis may, among other things, help us trace and understand how and to what extent that evidence informed and shaped Commissioner Bigge’s controversial Reports.