Discover the beautiful art and science of mapmaking. Throughout human history, the practice of mapmaking has helped us to navigate the world around us and understand our place in it.
This exhibition highlights key maps of the Hunter region from our collections, including surveys from the late 18th century and the mapping of later urban growth.
Launch Date and Time: 4 November 2024 2:30pm
Where: Level 2 of the Auchmuty Library, Newcastle Callaghan Campus
Exhibition to be launched by Emeritus Professor RobertClancy AM DSc FRACPFRS(N)
Exhibition closes late February 2025.
All Welcome.
UNROLLED The Hunter’s Forgotten Maps Exhibition
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Unrolled: The Hunter’s Forgotten Maps
Introduction
Cartography is the beautiful art and science of map making. For thousands of years it has helped us to understand the world around us, and our place in it. From the moment (the then) Lieutenant James Cook charted the “small round rock or island” on the 10 May 1770, now known as Nobbys Whibayganba, Newcastle and the region has been captured in maps, charts and plans. However, to Aboriginal peoples of this land, map making was the spatial tool of European colonisation and exploitation of land and its resources. The European eye, and the lines drawn on paper, replaced all natural boundaries of land, sea, mountain and river with Greek geometric lines and squares. It symbolically enslaved and imprisoned all in its path; creating opportunities for the settlers, while at the same time dispossessing the original custodians. If you could draw it, you could own it, and to the Kings & Queens of England, went all the land and its key resources of coal, timber, lime and salt. This exhibition highlights the key maps created across these last two centuries as they charted this colonising expansion that continues to this day. Given the distress and trauma, we extend to all First nations peoples that this work is conducted in memory and respectfully honours the First Australian People, the Aboriginal People of this land.
Featured Maps, Plans & Charts
Port Stephens Surveyed by Charles Grimes 16th March 1795
(Courtesy of the State Library of NSW)
Deputy-Surveyor Charles Grimes’ Chart represents how Port Stephens looked on the 16 March 1795. “Port Stephens” was named by Cook as his sailed past on the 11 May 1770, and represents, for our region, the first contact point between Worimi Aboriginal First Nations people and Europeans. Five convicts had escaped from Parramatta in September 1790 and managed to hug the coastline to Port Stephens where they became stranded and taken in by the natives there. They remained there for five years, until they were recaptured by Captain Broughton on 25 August 1795.
“They told a ridiculous story, that the natives appeared to worship them, often assuring them, when they began to understand each other, that they were undoubtedly the ancestors of some of them who had fallen in battle, and had returned from the sea to visit them again ; and one native appeared firmly to believe that his father was come back in the person of either Lee or Connoway, and took them to the spot where his body had been burnt. On being told that immense numbers of people existed far beyond their little knowledge, they instantly pronounced them to be the spirits of their countrymen, which, after death, had migrated into other regions.”
An Eye Sketch of Hunter’s River 1797 (Courtesy of Hydrographic Department, U.K)
The first European “discoverer” of Newcastle was Lieutenant John Shortland, who in 1797 made this eye sketch of a place he named “Hunter’s River”. Writing to his father in 1798 he said:
“In my passage down I discovered a very fine coal river, which I named after Governor Hunter. The enclosed I send you, being an eye-sketch which I took the little time I was there. Vessels from 60 to 250 tons may load there with great ease, and completely landlocked. I dare say, in a little time, this river will be a great acquisition to this settlement.”
On the eye sketch he marked the places of “Natives” in the vicinity of present Honeysuckle Newcastle, and in the vicinity of the Stockton side of today’s Stockton Bridge. So, how could he have “discovered” it if people were already here? By the time this eye-sketch was officially published in 1810, the “natives” had disappeared from the sketch.
Ensign Barrallier’s Coal Harbour and Rivers ..1801 (Courtesy of National Archives of the UK)
This was the first proper survey of the region by Francis Barrallier. Two versions of chart/map exist housed at the Hydrographic Office in Kew, UK, and the other in the National Archives of the UK. Why two versions? The Survey mission in 1801 sought to establish an outpost at Coal River (Newcastle) as a prison for the worst of the worst convicts. They also sought to map the potential resources of the area for exploitation and extraction, such as coal, cedar, lime and salt. The names of the rivers have now changed again and again over time, as each European map maker named places and localities after people they admired. The river recorded by Barrallier shows at it looked at point of European arrival, with successive floods over the past 200 years, the original branches are now billabongs in today’s landscape.
[The Dangar Map] Map of the River Hunter, and its branches…. 1828. Joseph Cross.
Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell (1792-1855), Surveyor General instructed all surveyors to record Aboriginal place names wherever they encountered such information from Aboriginal guides and informants. One of these surveyors was Henry Dangar who was responsible for the land surveys in Newcastle and the wider districts. This map was created by cartographer Joseph Cross, and accompanied Dangar’s book Index and Directory.., (with a very long title) published in 1828, (of which we hold one of the surviving rare copies) as a guide to attract immigrant settlers to the region. Of note, the map is the primary source for authentic Aboriginal names in our local region, that were used to dual name several sites There is also a companion map of Port Stephens from the same year.
Plan of the Port of Newcastle reduced from recent Surveys by Officers of the Harbours & Rovers Department, 1882.
This hand-coloured Plan of the Port of Newcastle 1882 is one of a series of such plans known as the “Knaggs Maps” because they were published by R.C. Knaggs & Co. in the end of The Newcastle nautical almanac, directory and guide to the Port of Newcastle came out every year during the late 19th century. We hold a number of these almanacs dating from 1880 to 1895, the plans show the topography of Newcastle, harbour and especially Stockton which we see change from a bush to the beginnings of a streetscape. This is the plan that helps us explain the Aboriginal landscape through the topography. At the lower left-hand side of the plan, note the dune system extending around from Cottage Creek, this is where Aboriginal people lived, worked and were buried. The wetlands are now today’s sports fields and ovals. During the Pasha Bulker storms of 2007, this area went back to being a wetland, water has an ancient memory.
Continental Australia showing the routes by which the Aboriginal race spread itself throughout the continent, 1887
Bird’s-eye-view map of Newcastle, N.S.W. Supplement to ‘The Illustrated Sydney News,’ June 27, 1889.
From time to time The Illustrated Sydney News would create and publish the most exquisite engravings of townships. These engravings were poster feature supplements that were accompanied by progress reports on how these important places were developing, documenting their rise and progress. The detail of these engravings is extraordinary and are masterpieces of art and craft capturing the minute details of the major coal port of Newcastle and the surrounding built landscape that had emerged around it. The details and accuracy of buildings represented are amazing to historians as well as artists, but how were they created. Some think it was by hot air balloon, others that they enlisted ground artists who went street by street recording building details that were provided to the perspective artist and engravers to accomplish. No matter how they were created, we all remain gobsmacked at how this quality and accuracy to detail was accomplished on wood. These masterpieces survive in a precarious way due to the acidic nature of the paper stock they were printed on. So, to find one in great condition is very rare.
Map of the Country around Newcastle N.S.W. Surveyed by Lc Cpl A.. Barrett, Royal Engineers. October – November 1910. Shows the five islands, Harbour details and suburbs of Newcastle.
Pindimar City Sales Plan, Port Stephens, New South Wales [c. 1919]
Hamilton, Merewether : City of Newcastle, Northumberland County District scheme map, 1960 – Sheet 2
The Work of Warren J. Hardy
Display of cartographic tools with the resultant maps created for the Hunter Valley Research Foundation in the early 1960s.
Map of Hunter Valley showing forest land, grassland, sown land, urban areas, barren land, water areas and waterlogged areas. “Map no. 2. H.V.R.F. 1:253 440 series”. Creator Burley, T. M., (compiler) Hardy, W. J., (cartographer) Hunter Valley Research Foundation Date 1960
Transverse Mercator projection. Relief shown by hypsometric tints and spot heights. Information Published [Newcastle] : The Hunter Valley Research Foundation, 1964. Hardy, W. J.
Warren Hardy (1937-) born Wallsend, New South Wales, and a skilled cartographer and engineer. After studying at Newcastle Technical College in the 1950s embarked on a career in marine engineering and drafting. In the 1960s Hardy worked at the Hunter Valley Research Foundation (HVRF), where he crafted detailed geographical maps of Newcastle and the surrounding Hunter Region. His work encompassed land cover maps that highlighted forests, grasslands, and cultivated lands, and urban areas as well as detailed maps of natural resources in both the upper and lower Hunter Valley. The instruments displayed in this cabinet are part of Hardy’s personal collection.
Former cartographer Warren Hardy standing next to display of personal collection at Exhibition opening 4 November 2024.
Wall Maps of the Hunter Valley and a selection of Subdivision Plans
Timeline created by Bethany Mooney (Career Ready Placement Student 2024)
![Transverse Mercator projection. Relief shown by hypsometric tints and spot heights.Information Published [Newcastle] : The Hunter Valley Research Foundation, 1964. Hardy, W. J.](https://hunterlivinghistories.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Resources-Hunter-Valley-3.jpg)
When is the exhibition on?
I’m wanting to see it next time I am in Newcastle