Southeast Australia & Tasmania Map 1967 Atlas Print - Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Hobart

The Polish Army Topography Service compiled this map of south-eastern Australia in 1967 for the Pergamon World Atlas, the English edition of the Polish Atlas Swiata published in 1968 by Pergamon Press in Oxford together with the Polish Scientific Publishers P.W.N. of Warsaw. The atlas is a giant, weighing nearly 5.5 kilograms and holding about 48 square meters of maps, among them more than 400 thematic maps, and it was admired for its tasteful tinted color, especially in topography and bathymetry. This sheet, printed on beige paper by Wojskowe Zaklady Kartograficzne in Warsaw at 1:5,000,000, combines physical and political detail with an inset of Adelaide, and it is classed as a regional map of Australia's southeast including Tasmania. In 1967 Australia was a Commonwealth nation of about twelve million people that had just voted by referendum to count Aboriginal Australians in the census.

Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide are the cities the sheet marks, with an inset giving Adelaide a closer view. Sydney lies on the New South Wales coast where the Great Dividing Range drops toward the sea, Melbourne sits at the head of Port Phillip Bay at the mouth of the Yarra, and Adelaide spreads across the plain between the Mount Lofty Ranges and Gulf St Vincent. Inland, the Murray River drains the southeast toward South Australia, while the Snowy Mountains, then being harnessed by the huge Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme, hold the mainland's highest peaks. Tasmania lies south across Bass Strait, and the sheet adds the Pacific and Indian Oceans, major roads and rail lines, and mountains, valleys and plains with elevation shown by contour lines and shading.

Polish-Australian families in Melbourne or Adelaide, many of whom arrived after the Second World War, may see their two countries meet on this sheet, which was drawn in Warsaw for an English-language atlas, and that makes it a fitting gift for an anniversary or a family reunion. TheMapVault's other Pergamon sheet shows the whole of Australia at 1:10,000,000 with an inset of Canberra; this edition is the larger-scale view of the southeast, centered on the corner of the continent where most Australians live. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print.