Mapping Papua New Guinea | State Library of New South Wales

Mapping Papua New Guinea

Earliest map naming North and South America "Americae septemtrionalior pars" and "Americae meridionalior pars". ZM2 910/1589/1

The map above shows an early image of New Guinea and includes Magellan's ship Victoria celebrating his circumnavigation of the globe. The map was produced by the famous Dutch cartographer Abraham Ortelius in 1689 and was included in his atlas Theatri orbis terrarum. Europeans were unsure of the extent of the legendary Great South land below the equator.

The eastern half of the mainland of New Guinea was first explored by the Spanish and Portuguese in the 16th century.

Curious map of some late discoveries in the Terra Australia comprehending New Guinea and New Britain MI 801/1759/1

Papua New Guinea is one of Australia's closests neighbours, lying 160 kilometres north of Cape York but only 4 kilometres from the northern most island of the Torres Strait. It comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and 600 offshore islands. It covers approximately 465,000 square kilometres, making it the second largest country in the South Pacific after Australia.

Nova Guinea [cartographic material: [from a map of the world, 1600, by F. Hoeius] / facsimile George Collingridge. [Album view] Z/Ce 90/2

The principal island of Papua New Guinea was found by Euorpean explorers around 1526-27 by Don Jorge de Meneses. Although European navigators visited and explored the Papua New Guinea islands for the next 170 years, little was known of the Papua New Guinea inhabitants until the late 19th century.

This 1830s map has been turned into a jigsaw puzzle with 48 pieces and made of and coloured, copper engraved jigsaw laid on wood ; 20.3 × 24.5 cm.

This map shows the known Oceania region, including Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, South East Asia and the islands of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean.

Territory of New Guinea administered by the Commonwealth under mandate from the League of Nations and Papua, a territory of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1928 / compiled and drawn by Lands Survey Branch, Works and Railways. M4 921.3/1928/1

Mapping Papua New Guinea remained difficult until the 1970s.  Prior to this, large areas had not been explored, and the geography of the mountainous highlands and off shore islands was known from only a few occasional surveys. The lack of knowledge was not surprising given the combination of rugged inaccessible mountains, dense jungle cover, wet tropical climate and, in the early days, hostile and warlike tribes.

When aerial photography became more prevalent in the 1950s it was possible to begin mapping the whole country. Even so, continual cloud cover frustrated efforts to photograph many highland areas, until radar imagery became available in 1971.