Papers relating to the Communist Arts Group, Shipping Crisis Resistance Committee and Maritime Workers' issues. Material relating to Afro-American musician and activist Paul Robeson and the Victoria Street, Potts Point, Sydney Green bans and protests against development. Both of these became subjects of literary works by Wills. The papers contain manuscripts and typescripts (Including by John Manifold), correspondence, ephemera.

Correspondence between Jessie and Robert Philp, and others; diaries; London theatre programmes and rowing regatta programmes; realia, albums (2 albums of postcards and one album of Queensland Flood 1893 views); family papers including marriage certificate, and brief history of Burns, Philp & Co. Ltd.