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In 1900, an English immigrant, Conrad Kelsall (1873-1936), settled on a block of virgin lowland rainforest on the Little Mulgrave River in tropical north Queensland. Four letters written to his family in Devon in 1903 tell of his butterfly collecting, both as a personal interest and a potential commercial activity. He supplied specimens to local natural history dealer, Alfred Bernie Bell, who sold them to major Australian butterfly collectors, G. A. Waterhouse and George Lyell, English natural history dealers Watkins and Doncaster, and famed lepidopterist Walter Rothschild. One letter also records Kelsall's contact with little-known Australian beetle collector, Horace Brown. The four letters provide a glimpse of the local enthusiasm for 'butterflying' in north Queensland in the early twentieth century, as well as a record of how north Queensland specimens found their way to some of the major butterfly collectors of the day. Annotated transcripts of the letters are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]