I don’t know what it is about maps. But I just like looking at them. New ones, like the Ordnance Survey (OS) maps we used to study at school. The world atlas you have at home and in school. Road maps when on a road trip. Or even google maps. There is something about them. Especially really old maps. And even more especially first maps of the world and specific countries. If you don’t like maps and maybe think people like me are a bit (lot?) weird, then you may still be interested in this set of posts. Because it is a fairly deep dive into the history of how Australia was mapped. If you do not already know it may just surprise you…

How I Fell Down The Rabbit Hole…

It all started when a book caught my eye while visiting the local library. In one of those brief, fleeting milliseconds something can really grab your attention. So I picked up the book and read it. Then I slipped down a rabbit hole and I was fascinated…

The map on the front cover is part of a map called Mar di India (from around 1700) but the outline of a huge chunk of Australia’s mainland along with part of Tasmania, is taken from a more famous map – The Tasman Map (aka the Tasman-Bonaparte map). The Tasman map is thought to have been made in the mid to late 1600s in Batavia (now known as Jakarta), home of the Dutch East India Company, on Japanese paper. It was also thought that it was most likely compiled by a team of draftsmen from a range of charts from two voyages made by Abel Tasman. But here’s where I went further down the rabbit hole…

The Start of My Quest…

I already knew about Abel Tasman. He was a Dutch explorer whose name lives on in Tasmania; as he was the first European to chart part of the coast of that state. Tasman actually named it Van Diemen’s Land after Antonio Van Diemen, then boss of the famed Dutch East Indies Company. What he never realised at that time however, was that it is an island.

The Tasman Map was published in the mid to late 1600s; more than 100 years before James Cook hit the east coast of Australia and claimed the land for the British crown. What surprised me was the  uncanny accuracy of the west and south west coasts on this and other maps from that era. Tasman’s voyages never covered those parts of Australia (more below). So I decided to dig deeper….

NSW State Library

When I started digging I realised that I could not cover this subject in a single post. Or even several, to do it real justice. But don’t panic! I intend to cover it as well as I can in three or four posts; OK, maybe five (so keep an eye out for the follow-up posts). Of course there are many books and works on this very subject. In this, the first post on the subject, I need to mention the New South Wales State Library in Sydney city centre. When searching for the Tasman Map online I discovered that the original is held in the NSW State Library. So off I went to see it. Or so I thought…

In fact the map is held in a safe. Inside an underground bunker-like room with all the usual alarms and climate control you would expect in a Mission Impossible movie. If you want to see it with your own eyes you have to complete a series of forms and go through certain checks. And as for touching it… well don’t be silly! I thought about it – for all of 5 seconds – and decided that was just a bit too much. In any case there is plenty more to see and read in the state library.

As you enter the old part of the library (called The Mitchell Library) the reception area floor has a tiled reproduction of the Tasman Map. And it is fantastic. The photos just do not do it justice. Not even close. I definitely recommend seeing this even if maps are not your thing. As I said to the lady in the reference library who explained what was required to view the Tasman map; ‘I doubt the actual map will look as good as the tiled floor over there.’ She agreed.

The photo above shows parts of the tiled floor enlarged including; top right, the first mapping of Tasmania (Van Diemen’s Land) and (top left) the first glimpse – on any map – of part of New Zealand.

Inside the Mitchell Library Reading Room: Similar to the well built old Victorian libraries we saw in Adelaide and Melbourne. They really don’t build them like this any more…

Inside the Map Rooms:
Top right – The eastern hemisphere of Mappe-monde by Louis Denis from 1764.
Bottom left – The southern hemisphere of Gerard Valck’s map from 1695.
Bottom right – Image of Vincenzo Coronelli’s globe from the 1680s.

The Plot Thickens…

From a book in the reference section of the Mitchell Room I then found out that Tasman’s two voyages of discovery in the early 1640s did not include any of the west coast nor the south coast.

Tasman hardly went near the whole bottom left quadrant of the continent in fact. Tasman is very well known of course, so that got me thinking. How could a map, bearing his name, contain such accurate mapping of the west and south coasts when Tasman himself never saw that part of the country? It seemed that there was some missing link(s) in the production of the Tasman map. Or so I thought… More to come…

Be sure to check out Part Two of this investigation in the near future…