05-08-2025
European cartographers' inaccurate maps of Australia have plenty to teach us
Looking at some of the early European cartographers' maps of the Australian continent, it's hard to not be amused by the inaccuracies.
In one, we see Queensland conjoined with Papua New Guinea, while Tasmania melts off the page, dragging most of the eastern coastline with it.
In another, much older, map the entire southern hemisphere is dominated by one massive, hypothetical continent known as "Terra Australis" that had first been proposed by the Ancient Greeks.
(Observing that most of the "known world" — Europe, Africa and Asia — was in the northern half of the globe, philosophers and scientists believed there would have to be a land mass equally as large on the other side to balance it all out.)
But maps like these can tell us about more than just the rough guesstimations made by 17th-century Europeans in sailing ships.
The National Library of Australia holds many fascinating and precious maps from the early years of European exploration and colonisation of Australia.
Two particularly intriguing ones are unassuming and oddly-shaped prints that the library acquired in 2024.
These maps show an incomplete coastline of Australia as it was known to Europeans in 1696 — nearly a century before Captain Cook or the First Fleet.
"Dutch and other ships were frequently blown off course on their way to the East Indies," library curator Susannah Helman says.
"They mapped what they found."
These unusual prints are known as globe gores: rare leftovers from the workshop of Vincenzo Coronelli, a highly sought after Italian cartographer and globe-maker of the 17th century.
Pre-modern globe-making was a painstaking task. As anyone who's ever tried to gift a soccer ball for Christmas will know, wrapping paper around a sphere is tricky work.
First, a frame from timber was constructed, then covered with layer upon layer of paper, fabric, glue and plaster, forming a smooth sphere.
Next, strips of paper — shaped like slices of an orange — were glued around a plaster sphere. The precision involved in this craft was astronomical: if the papers were one millimetre out of alignment, the whole globe could be ruined.
While a few dozen of Coronelli's globes can be found in museums and collections around the world, only a handful of these unfinished globe gores have survived.
"Having these leaves as separate pieces makes them easier to examine for researchers, or to put on display in our galleries," library curator Alice Quinn says.
"It also shows the Australian coast in its partially mapped state, showing that European exploration of the continent was still in progress."
Below the incomplete coastline of Australia, Coronelli's globe gores feature a prominent whaling scene.
"From the illustration, we are fairly certain it depicts First Nations people hunting whales from canoes and using spears," Quinn says.
"Sadly, due to the lack of detail we are unable to tell if they are First Australians or Pasifika peoples, or maybe people indigenous to another area of the world."
Traditionally, gaps in European maps were often filled with decorative motifs or mythical sea monsters, but Coronelli chose instead to depict a living culture.
"Coronelli would have seen his works not just as decorative, but at the cutting edge of cartographic research.
"It is likely that he had seen depictions of First Nations people in reports and publications from explorers of the period, and included them in his own work to demonstrate that he was abreast of the knowledge coming back from the newly European-explored areas of the map."
When asked if they have a favourite map in the library's collection, Quinn and Helman say it's hard to choose.
"I am particularly fond of our pocket globe by Herman Moll (1719) which is only 9 centimetres in diameter," Quinn says. "I find the concept of pocket globes particularly amusing. I can imagine Georgian dandies retrieving one from their pockets to win pedantic arguments."
Helman, on the other hand, favours one of the library's other recent acquisitions: a 1608 map of Asia by Willem Blaeu.
"[It's] a landmark map of our region from the dawn of the Dutch Golden Age," she says.
"It is believed to be the only surviving copy that has mapping and text comparatively intact … You can see ships, delightful decorative flourishes and even monsters on the map."
In our era of Google Maps and satellites, these early European maps of Australia and our region may appear inaccurate, but they still have plenty of stories to tell.
