In these essays, students reported about their research into an aspect of the colonial experience in the New Guinea Highlands. Using the collection of patrol reports available online through the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), students explored different ways in which the penetration into the New Guinea Highlands played out by writing about one patrol report that is contained in the UCSD collection. The UCSD collection is a dynamic and active resource that is increasingly being used by researchers of the colonial era in Papua New Guinea. Student’s research will contribute to improving the collection and making it more accessible to researchers in the future.