Australia

Rare 17th century map of Australia to go on show in Canberra
ABC - Kathleen Dyett and Penny McLintock​



One of the rarest maps in the world, a 17th century depiction of New Holland, will go on display in Canberra next month after being forgotten for a century.


The large-scale map, Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus (the Eastern and Asian archipelago), was created in 1663 by the master cartographer for the Dutch East India Company, Joan Blaeu.



MapTerraAustralis.jpg

Picture: National Library of Australia​



It formed the basis for all other maps of New Holland and was used by Captain James Cook to complete the mapping of Australia in 1770.

"For the first time we can show you the rarest of rare, the map which is considered by many to be Australia's birth certificate," said National Library of Australia Council chair Ryan Stokes.



"It's the first map that tells the rest of the world where we are."
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icerat said:
Thanks for the post Akhenaten. Any ideas on where the detached part down the bottom right is? New Zealand?
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Yep, that will be the NW corner of the South Island, as discovered by Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642, during the same voyage he discovered Tasmania. The Dutch East India Company (which had dispatched him) were disappointed with the discoveries (Tasman stumbled across a major Maori agricultural settlement in "war season" and a number of his crew were promptly killed and eaten, convincing him to leave - he called the place Murder's Bay, but Cook renamed it Golden Bay) and no one returned to New Zealand or Tasmania until Cook's voyage over a century later.
 
icerat said:
Thanks for the post Akhenaten.
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My pleasure, as always. I've left this thread abandoned for far too long.



icerat said:
Any ideas on where the detached part down the bottom right is? New Zealand?
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Yes, it's New Zealand, or as it was known to the Europeans in those days - Zeelandia Nova.

Also visible, although somewhat indistinctly, is the southern coast of Tasmania (Terre de Diemens)

Both of these stretches of coastline were discovered and explored by the great Dutch seafarer, explorer and merchant, Abel Janszoon Tasman in the latter part of 1642.


Your enquiry will probably be better answered by referring to two later maps which were based on (ie. almost directly copied from) the Joan Blaeu map.

The first was produced in 1663 by the French cartographer, Melchisédech Thévenot.


MapTerraAustralis2.jpg


Here are some enlargements of the bits in question:


MapTerraAustralis2a.jpg

Tasmania



MapTerraAustralis2b.jpg

New Zealand​




This map, produced in 1744 by the English map engraver Emanuel Bowen shows almost the exact same details, only more prettily.



MapTerraAustralis3.jpg
 
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I see from the WP article on Joan Blaeu that the map was based on Abel Tasman's work. Amazing stuff really. And I complain about taking a couple of days to fly home!

I probably learned all this at school, but that was more than a few years ago. :)
 
It's amazing how good mapping was long before they had modern technology. Cook's map of New Zealand is so accurate you can actually still use it in most places. He only made two real mistakes; denoting Banks Peninsula as an island and Stewart Island as a peninsula.
 
Correction:


In the course of creating that last post I've realised that both my original post (#2882) and the ABC article are in error about the date of the Joan Blaeu map.

It was actually produced in 1659, not 1663.


That'll teach me to fact-check more carefully.
 
icerat said:
Thanks for the post Akhenaten. Any ideas on where the detached part down the bottom right is? New Zealand?
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As others have pointed out it is the NW corner of the South Island, including Farewell Spit and Murderers/Golden Bay, but it also depicts the western coast of the middle and upper North Island as well. Marked are Cape Pieter Boreel, now known as Cape Egmont (in Taranaki, roughly halfway up the Island, renamed by Cook after he saw the mountain of the same name that Tasman missed), and Cape Maria Van Diemen at the island's northen and westernmost point. The Three Kings islands are also marked. Had Tasman penetrated only a little further east he might have discovered (in a European sense at least, the locals already knew all about them) the Marlborough Sounds and Cook Strait. At first I wondered how he could have missed those, but looking at a modern map it becomes clear that could have been an easy thing to do. From Golden Bay looking east a gap would not be readily apparent from sea level, and the map becomes a lot clearer taking that into account.
 
Huttosaurus said:
As others have pointed out it is the NW corner of the South Island, including Farewell Spit and Murderers/Golden Bay, but it also depicts the western coast of the middle and upper North Island as well. Marked are Cape Pieter Boreel, now known as Cape Egmont (in Taranaki, roughly halfway up the Island, renamed by Cook after he saw the mountain of the same name that Tasman missed), and Cape Maria Van Diemen at the island's northen and westernmost point.
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Westernmost, but the northern point is North Cape, further to the east. :)



Huttosaurus said:
The Three Kings islands are also marked. Had Tasman penetrated only a little further east he might have discovered (in a European sense at least, the locals already knew all about them) the Marlborough Sounds and Cook Strait.
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After leaving Golden Bay he sheltered at the northern end of D'Urville Island, which is part of the Marlborough Sounds, and he had intended to explore further east, but was driven north by bad weather (Cook Strait is one of the roughest straits in the world).


Huttosaurus said:
At first I wondered how he could have missed those, but looking at a modern map it becomes clear that could have been an easy thing to do. From Golden Bay looking east a gap would not be readily apparent from sea level, and the map becomes a lot clearer taking that into account.
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Yes, people forget that to travel by sea from the North Island to the South Island you actually head north and west. From D'Urville Island he would be some 40km or so north of Cook Strait. Overall, the South Island overlaps the North Island by some 70km.

As an aside, weird bit of trivia, today the two main islands of New Zealand have finally been officially named; North Island/Te Ika-a-Maui and South Island/Te Waipounamu. Weird that for the last couple of centuries they hadn't technically been named!
 
Akhenaten said:
Hi bros!

Welcome to the Australia thread.
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I remember years ago playing a game of trivial pursuit with friends. A question came up, something like "which country provides the most foreign tourists to Australia?"

Answers given were things like Japan, US, UK.

The actual answer was New Zealand and virtually in unison the entire group protested with "New Zealand? That's not a foreign country!"

:D
 
icerat said:
I remember years ago playing a game of trivial pursuit with friends. A question came up, something like "which country provides the most foreign tourists to Australia?"

Answers given were things like Japan, US, UK.

The actual answer was New Zealand and virtually in unison the entire group protested with "New Zealand? That's not a foreign country!"

:D
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Exactly.

We're quite proud to be the Wist Island.


AnzacBlue.png


Mostly.

:)
 
icerat said:
I remember years ago playing a game of trivial pursuit with friends. A question came up, something like "which country provides the most foreign tourists to Australia?"

Answers given were things like Japan, US, UK.

The actual answer was New Zealand and virtually in unison the entire group protested with "New Zealand? That's not a foreign country!"

:D
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We seem to be part of Australia by default to the rest of the world anyway. How else to explain the funny/frustrating phenomenon of seeing your country frequently omitted altogether from world maps in movies or on logos? :)
 
gumboot said:
Westernmost, but the northern point is North Cape, further to the east. :)
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True, I've even been there.

gumboot said:
(Cook Strait is one of the roughest straits in the world).
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Beautiful on a nice day though. Most of my crossings have been in summer or autumn, and I've only had a couple of truly horrendous ones, although I haven't yet had the pleasure of being aboard one of those epics where they get defeated and wander around the strait for a few hours before heading back to Picton :)


gumboot said:
As an aside, weird bit of trivia, today the two main islands of New Zealand have finally been officially named; North Island/Te Ika-a-Maui and South Island/Te Waipounamu. Weird that for the last couple of centuries they hadn't technically been named!
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I'm quite happy with that, although it seems to be bringing out a few rednecks around the traps. Those are the names Cook recorded. My suggestions of "That one", "That other one", and "Neither" for Stewart Island seem to have been carefully ignored :).
 
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