University of Melbourne Map Collection shows how early explorers pursued the theory of terra Australis: the great southern continent
[ UniNews Vol. 13, No. 11
28 June - 12 July 2004 ]
The University of Melbournes Map Collection currently has over 100,000 maps, 15,000 aerial photos, and many gigabytes of digital data in vector and raster formats for use predominantly by academic staff and students. It is the largest academic map collection in Australia, with only the National, New South Wales and Victorian State Libraries collections being larger. Online access provides ready viewing of a select range of the collections rare maps and historical cartographic material. More than 500 prized maps of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia and the world are online as high quality and detailed images. University Map Collection acting assistant curatorDr Brendan Whyte outlines here the scopeand significance of the collection andhighlights some of its most notable treasures.
In 1606, almost 400 years ago, the Dutch ship Duyfkun under Captain Willem Jansz landed on the Cape York Peninsula. This is the first widely accepted European discovery and mapping of Australia. For many centuries Western scholars had presumed the existence of Terra Australis Incognita, the great southern continent necessary to balance the known world.
The great southern continent theory originated in ancient Greece and was supported by the librarian and cartographer Ptolemy (AD 87�150). Up until the 17th or 18th century a southern continent in many shapes and forms appeared on maps of the world which drew indirectly on Ptolemys work.
This imagined continent steadily diminished in size on cartographic works as expeditions by explorers found the southern oceans larger than expected. The University of Melbournes Map Collection holds a world map (1630) and a map of Asia (c.1640) by Dutch cartographer Henricus Hondius (1597-1651) showing the lands discovered by Jansz. Further explorations by the Dutchmen Nuyts in 1627 and Tasman in 1642 led to the charting of the western, then southern, and northern coasts of what the Dutch called New Holland.
It was not until 1688, 82 years after Jansz, that the first Englishman, William Dampier, landed in Australia at King Sound near what is now Derby, Western Australia. Dampier returned in the 1690s to further explore the west coast of Australia. This exploration is beautifully displayed in a hand coloured map of Dampiers circumglobal route (above).
Australias more hospitable east coast remained unexplored until Cooks voyage of 1770, although Bass Strait was not discovered until 1798 by Bass and Flinders. The last major sections of the Australian coast around South Australia were charted by both Flinders and the Frenchman Baudin in 1803.
Melbourne Universitys Map Collection currently has more than 100,000 maps, 15,000 aerial photos, and many gigabytes of digital data in vector and raster formats for use predominantly by academic staff and students. It is the largest academic map collection in Australia, with only the National, New South Wales and Victorian State libraries collections being larger.
Improving access to a range of historical cartographic material is the online collection of rare maps. Over 500 cultural treasures of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia and the world are available for viewing online as high quality and detailed images.
One important private donation now accessible on the Map Collection website is the Walker Collection. During his time as the Australian ambassador to Turkey, Ronald Walker and his wife Pamela collected 135 maps of Asia Minor and neighbouring areas dated between 1511 and 1774. This donation includes one of the earliest maps now held by the University, a coloured map of Turkey by Martin Waldseemüller from the 1513 Strasburg edition of Ptolemys Geographia by Johann Schott (see above far right). Few early maps of Turkey, Asia Minor and the Middle East are available online. The Universitys Map Collection makes available these high quality images in an effort to provide wider access while conserving the original maps.
Over the years the Map Collection has acquired a large amount of material through donations, in particular from the Geological Survey of Victoria and the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works. During his chancellorship of the University, Redmond Barry acquired many maps of British India for the Collection. Many previously separate departmental map collections, including those from the Geography Department and the Architecture library, have been amalgamated into the Collection. Nevertheless, the School of Earth Sciences continues to maintain its own map collection with an emphasis on Australian geological maps.
One of the Map Collections early curators was Dorothy Prescott, who went on to become Map Curator at the National Library, and in 2003 was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to map librarianship and carto-bibliography. Dorothy continues to do research on Australian cartographic martial and maintains a strong link to the Map Collection.
The Collections acquisition policy is designed to support the Universitys teaching and research programs. This includes topographic maps covering the world at scales up to 1:200,000. It holds over 10,000 historical maps of Melbourne and Victoria and a further 10,000 urban plans purchased from the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works, together with topographic and geologic series from around the world, and even mapping of other planets.
As well as printed maps, the Map Collection houses several hundred digital spatial datasets, comprising over 400 gigabytes of map data, which are accessible through the collections computers. Copies of the data can also be provided to Melbourne University staff and students for research and educational use. While the bulk of digital data users are from the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, enquiries are fielded from all faculties and disciplines of Melbourne University.
The Map Collection is on Level 4 of the Education Resource Library. It is open 9:30-5:30 Monday to Friday. All map images in this article and many others can be seen at higher detail on the Collections home page at http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/maps/ under Electronic Data.
Enquiries can be directed though the online information enquiries form, emailed, or via the central information phone service on (03) 8344 0444. Most of the Collection is catalogued and can be searched for on the library catalogue at http://cat.lib.unimelb.edu.au/
The remainder of the collection is uncatalogued and can be accessed with the help of the Map Collections staff.
Dr Brendan Whyte (bwhyte@unimelb.edu.au) is Acting Assistant Map Curator in the Universitys Education Resource Centre (ERC) Library at Parkville campus.
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