One layer of place

Before these maps

We reproduce historical maps of Australia. Survey plans, town allotments, parish and estate maps, and records of roads, railways and ownership as they were drawn in the colonial period. They are careful documents, and they reward close looking. But they begin partway through the story, and it is worth being clear about that.

What these maps record

A map like this was made to answer particular questions. Who was recorded as holding this allotment. Where the road ran. How the land was divided, surveyed and sold.

That is what it captures, and it captures it well. Read it closely and you can follow how a place was settled, parcel by parcel, over a few decades.

That is also its limit. It is a record of a system being laid down, not a record of everything already there.

What they do not show

The land in these maps was never empty. Long before the first survey peg, it was named, known, cared for and lived on for tens of thousands of years. It held language, law, story, seasons and custodianship, none of which a survey plan was built to record.

Nor do these maps show what settlement cost. The orderly lines of a survey were laid over dispossession, and in many places over violence, as First Peoples were forced from Country. The map shows one colonial record of change. It does not show all that was interrupted, resisted, held or carried forward.

So a map like this can show you an address. It cannot show you everything that place meant, or to whom, before it was measured.

Both things are true at once: the map is genuine history, and it is only one layer of it.

Where looking begins

The earlier and continuing story of Country is held by the First Peoples of this continent. It is theirs to tell.

But that does not mean we stop at the edge of the colonial map.

For us, these maps are often the beginning of a deeper curiosity. They show one record of place, but they also raise better questions. Who was here before this road was drawn? What names did this place already have? What knowledge, story, season, law and care belonged here long before it was divided into allotments?

We are a print studio, not cultural authorities. We work with colonial map records, and we will not pretend to speak for Traditional Owners. But we can be honest about what these records leave out, and we can point towards places where that knowledge is held and shared with proper context.

Once you start looking, the depth is astonishing. Tens of thousands of years of knowledge about this same land, held and kept and still alive. These maps sit on top of one of the deepest histories on earth.

If this page does one thing, we hope it sends you looking.

Where to look next

A few starting points, and only that.

• AIATSIS Map of Indigenous AustraliaA general reference, and a good first look at how differently this continent can be mapped. AIATSIS is careful to say it represents general locations of language, social or nation groups, not exact or fixed boundaries.
• First Peoples State Relations VictoriaFor the formally recognised Traditional Owner groups across Victoria, and a way to begin learning whose Country a place sits within.
• The First Knowledges seriesShort, readable books on Country, sky, plants, law, design and more, bringing Indigenous knowledge together with present-day perspectives. Curated by Margo Neale. One of the strongest doorways we know of.
• Deep Time Dreaming, Billy GriffithsOn the long human history of this continent, and how archaeology helped reshape the way many Australians understand its depth.