Art dealer Rex Nan Kivell chose them all. This is not surprising because Nan Kivell was all of those mentioned. And more. An orphan adopted by relatives of modest means, Nan Kivell made a fortune before his death in 1977.

A man who unmasked Nan Kivell through extensive research, National Library of Australia curator Nat Williams, has sifted the collection of at least 2500 images and whittled them to 50.

Williams aimed to show a range of media from paintings, drawings, water colours, finished oil portraits, commemorative medallions, to posters and books. Had his choices for the library's upcoming Portraits of the Famous & Infamous: Rex Nan Kivell Collection been based on the extraordinary stories behind the portraits, Williams would have needed much more time.

The show which runs from September 5 to December 13 frequently relates to voyages to and from England. "The most remarkable voyage story is the one of Elizabeth Isabella Broughton, or Betsy Broughton who was one of a handful of survivors of a Maori attack on the Boyd, a ship in New Zealand," says Williams.

"At the age of two she witnesses more or less the entire crew being slaughtered, most of them were cannibalised," he says. One of a handful of white survivors, Betsy is rescued by a sea captain who kidnapped and traded a couple of Maori chiefs for the European hostages.

"So she ends up not going back to Australia from New Zealand, this boat has to go on to Lima and Peru. She ends up staying there with a family who look after her for a while and she ends up coming back via Rio De Janeiro to Sydney. "

Her overjoyed father commissions a portrait from the fine portrait artist Richard Read who produces a lovely water colour which is sent back to the family in South America as a thank you.

"Somehow that little water colour makes its way to an antique shop in Salisbury in England where Rex Nan Kivell the collector happens to be walking down the street one day and sees this wonderful image of the little girl in the window. He thinks that's got to be an early colonial image and he buys it cheaply and takes it home.

"As he takes it out of the frame he discovered the letter in the back which says this is a portrait of my daughter Elizabeth Broughton - thanking the family that looked after her."

The Nan Kivell collection is full of serendipitist discoveries and images which tell much about the social history of Australia from early colonial settlement. These include pencil sketches from a court case arising from a missing heir, Sir Roger Tichborne. Born in 1829 and raised mainly in France, his family's land and fortune were based in Hampshire, England, where his uncle was the 8th baronet.

In 1854, he boarded the ship Bella, bound for New York and less than a week later was lost at sea. Tichborne was declared dead a year later. His devastated mother Lady Henriette Tichborne stayed hopeful that he had survived the shipwreck. She sent out inquiries across the world as to his whereabouts.

A bankrupt butcher from Wagga Wagga named Arthur Orton, declared he was in fact the missing Roger, turning Lady Tichborne's grief into delight at finding her long lost son.

Unconvinced, other family members hauled him into court from where the two pencil sketches were drawn and subsequently brought by Nan Kivell. "No one has worked out who they were by. I have now worked out they were by a step brother-in-law of Lady Tichborne herself, who was obviously sitting in the court, watching the case evolve and doing the sketches on bits of paper," says Williams.

The curator says it's a great story which would have intrigued Nan Kivell because he made up many stories about his own life. In truth he was born illegitimately in Christchurch, New Zealand.

"In 1916 he went off to war, served rather ingloriously but uses the experience of getting out of New Zealand to re-invent himself and from Reginald Nan Kivell he becomes Rex De charembac Nan Kivell and re-brands himself, if you like, as this debonair figure who becomes quite a celebrated figure in the London art work and makes a vast amount of money which he ploughsback into this wonderful collection."

Williams will give a free hour-long talk on the mysterious Nan Kivell at the library on Tuesday night. from 6pm.

From the Braidwood Independent newspaper, 1867.

A correspondent, writing from Tuena [between Crookwell and Bathurst] says : "A new rush has taken place about 10 miles from here on the road to Binda, on the private land of Mr Henry Nobes.

There are about 40 miners at work there now, with various success, making from 2 pounds to 3 pounds per week. The sinking is from six to 12 feet.

So far as has been tried, there is room there for a thousand men, and I have no doubt but something good will be struck.

The range backing the field runs fully four miles north and south, and I know there is a good reef on the same ground. As an inducement the miner's license at present will be 5 shillings per month, payable in advance; tradesmen's licenses, 1 pound. The gold is coarse and in no way water-worn."

Elsewhere in the paper , the discovery of gold is said to be causing a frenzy.

"It is unsafe to ask a friend to drop in for a chat and a cigar of an evening, for after a few dull attempts at talking, the topic is sure to turn to quartz.

Everything gives way now to this mania. It has even spread amongst the fair sex, many of whom hold a miner's right, and are duly registered in the books of the mining registrar as shareholders in the Rise and Shine, Root Hog of Die, or Lucky Find reefs, or some other of the dozens of eccentric-named quartz lodes. Any stalwart miner who may be amorously or matrimonially inclined, is "nowhere" if he cannot exhibit satisfactory proof of being a shareholder in some of the proved golden reefs, which is necessary as a passport to a favourable consideration of his addresses.

What will be the end of it, I know not; for though many of these reefs will possibly not pay expenses, there are many – the majority that will yield well."