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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 55 | February 2002


Important Rare Map Acquisitions from the Wettenhall Collection

Detail of the New South Wales map from W. Owen's Atlas Maps ...

A detail of the New South Wales map from W. Owen's Atlas Maps of
N. South Wales, Queensland, New Zealand, Victoria and South Australia 1869
Melbourne: H.Bolton, Lith., 1869
5 maps on 5 sheets: col. mounted on linen; 173.7 x 178.2 cm

The catalogue for the October 2001 auction of the retained collection of the late Dr H.N.B. Wettenhall provided a windfall for Australian map libraries and map collectors.

Amongst the collection of books and photographic prints were a number of early maps relating to the discovery, exploration and settlement of Melbourne and Victoria. A number of these maps were either previously unknown or so rare that only one or two other copies were known to exist.

Consequently, it was with great excitement that the Library heard that it was successful in obtaining eight of the maps, which now comprise a significant addition to the collection.

William Owen's Atlas Maps of N. South Wales, Queensland, New Zealand, Victoria and South Australia, published in 1869, is a set of five, wall-map size maps of the listed states and territories of Australasia showing the squatting runs extant at that time. Previously unrecorded, only the Victorian sheet was known from a copy held in the Mitchell Library.

Prior to the acquisition squatting run maps, showing the unofficial and illegal occupation of lands, were held of parts of the states of Queensland and New South Wales. Thomas Ham's sequence of squatting run maps of Victoria from about 1851 through to the early 1870s, also held in the collection, provides the only record for any one Australian state of the development of squatting.

The significance of the Owen set is that it provides the earliest record of the total extent of squatting runs in all the eastern states, except Tasmania, at the one time. They are also significant in that they were issued just prior to the enforcement of the Robertson Land Acts, which returned ownership of land to Government and public control.

Map of Port Phillip

In contrast to the Owen maps, John Wedge's Map of Port Phillip from the survey of Mr Wedge and others, Sydney: 1836, is tiny, but its significance lies in it being the oldest published map of Melbourne. Two other copies exist in public collections at the State Library of Victoria and the Mitchell Library. Wedge was the surveyor for the Port Phillip Association and sailed from Tasmania to survey the 600 000 acres Batman had rented from the Aborigines for the proposed city. In the course of his explorations Wedge named the Yarra River. The map shows Batman's purchase divided in blocks allotted to shareholders in the Port Phillip Association. Manuscript annotations believed to have been made by the Headlam family, pastoral pioneers of Tasmania and Victoria, also appear on the map.

Two important maps by the cartographer, Thomas Ham were also acquired. The circa 1860 edition of his map, Map of the Settled Districts Around Melbourne in the Colony of Victoria by J.J. Blundell, an update of the 1853 map by Ham, helped to fill in a gap in the Library's collection of early settlement maps of Victoria. Ham was an important cartographer, engraver and publisher based in Melbourne who dominated the Melbourne map-publishing scene from 1847 to 1854.

Ham later moved to Queensland the scene of the second Ham acquisition. Map of New South Wales Shewing at a Glance the Recent Inland Tour of Doctor Leichhardt from Moreton Bay to Port Essington was published in Melbourne in 1846 and issued at the time of Leichhardt's return from his expedition from Moreton Bay to Port Essington. Leichhardt's route and details of the land he discovered as well as some details from Sturt's central Australian expedition are shown.

Of the other maps featuring Leichhardt, published at the same time, William Baker's sketchy incomplete and undated map, is the only other detailed map of the journey available. Consequently the Ham map represents the most detailed and possibly the earliest map showing the full extent of Leichhardt's first exploration survey.
—Maura O'Connor

Above left: Wedge, John Helder, 1793-1872 Map of Port Phillip from the survey of Mr Wedge and others Sydney: R.Clint, No 15 Bridge Street, [1836] 1 map; 31 x 37.1 cm

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