Peat and organic soils are characterised as problematic soils due to their high compressibility and low shear strength. Building on these problematic materials can impose many special problems in civil engineering design and construction. It is therefore understandable that constructions and buildings on these types of soils are often avoided whenever possible. Consequently, it was no great incentive to try to understand the geotechnical behaviour of these types of soils in the past. In Malaysia these types of soils are prevalent especially in the state of Sarawak. The need for designing and constructing structures over these types of soils due to pressure on land use makes it necessary to investigate the physical and mechanical properties of such soils. A total of twenty six disturbed soils samples were studies in the present work. The samples were collected from four locations in Miri, Sarawak namely Kuala Baram, Curtin New Road and Eastwood Valley Golf Course. These soils represented tropical peat and organic soils with organic content, water content and specific gravity ranging from 10 to 84%, 80 to 690% and 1.07 to 2.64, respectively. The liquid limit and plastic limits are in the range of 39 to 241% and 30 to 206%, respectively. The results of physical properties as above were found lower than peat and organice soils in other regions. Low specific gravity, high water content and high liquid limit indicated that the soil samples were very soft due to the presence of organice matter in a soil. The research work also examines the shear strength and deformation characteristics of these types of soil. For this purpose, laboratory vane shear and one-dimensional consolidation tests were conducted. Undrained shear strength (Su) was in the range of 1.6 kPa to 24.2 kPa, which was very low compared with mineral soils. The values of compression index (Cc) were found to vary between 0.4 and 2.86. From the interpretation of the consolidation results, soils with organice contents between 10 to 84% exhibited short primary consolidation and significant secondary consolidation. Attempts were made to correlate between physical properties and mechanical properties. These correlations were compared with those reported and found it had similar trend for peat and organic soils in temperate regions.