Australia, New Zealand & Tasmania Map 1882 Regional Print - Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Hobart

Rand McNally and Company of Chicago published this large-format map of Australia in 1882, with big inset maps of New Zealand and of Sydney and a smaller inset of Tasmania. William Rand opened a print shop in Chicago in 1856, Andrew McNally joined in 1858, and the firm took its name in 1868; it printed its first map in 1872 using a cheaper wax-engraving method that gave it an edge over its rivals. The sheet's distinguishing feature is its detail: many nineteenth-century explorations are noted with the explorer's name and the date, and dashed lines mark the Overland Telegraph and the undersea cable to Java. It is a regional map of the continent and its neighbors, made when Australia was six separate colonies and New Zealand a seventh.

West Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, North Australia and a South Australia that reaches north to Daly Waters are all shown, each as a distinct colony. The explorers' routes include the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition of 1861, which reached the Gulf of Carpentaria. The Overland Telegraph, finished in 1872, runs down the center of the continent, and the undersea cable to Java connected Australia to the rest of the world. The large inset of Sydney gives the oldest city a street-level close-up, while the New Zealand inset spreads out the North and South Islands at a far larger scale than the main map. Tasmania appears in its own smaller inset.

A family with Australian or New Zealand relatives, an American collector of Rand McNally atlases, or a student of the telegraph age will find a distinctive gift here, perhaps for a move abroad or a reunion. TheMapVault's Gray map of 1878 and Cram's 1889 map are also American-made, but Rand McNally's 1882 sheet is the one with three insets, putting New Zealand, Sydney and Tasmania on one page. It also marks the explorers by name and date across the interior, alongside the telegraph lines that tied the continent together. 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.