MAPPING OURSELVES
SINGING THE TRAIL The Story of Mapping in Aotearoa New Zealand by John Mccrystal (Allen & Unwin, $60)
100 DAYS THAT MAPPED A NATION by Graeme Lay (New Holland, $60)
WE ARE HERE An Atlas of Aotearoa by Chris Mcdowell and Tim Denee (Massey University Press, $70)
In a time of sat navs and Google Maps, it is strange and significant that a flurry of print-books devoted to maps have suddenly appeared. Each may have been published in late 2019 but they examine the subject in very different ways — and tell entirely different stories.
John Mccrystal’s Singing the Trail begins with the first paper sketches by Polynesia navigators as they adapt their practical knowledge to the demands of a European science. It closes with an image of New Zealand viewed from space.
Generally chronological, the strength of Mccrystal’s book is its fine, full-colour images — even though some might be reproduced slightly smaller than a reader would prefer. Each map is contextualised in a thematic chapter and has its own explanatory introduction.
Charts of coastal lighthouses are placed alongside a near-imaginary layout plan for the original Auckland city centre. Hochstetter’s marvellous 1863 geological survey of the province of Auckland is followed by a 1960s giveaway National Airways Corporation Fun Map. It is a beautiful selection.
Taking a different angle entirely, Graeme Lay takes his cue from the fact Captain James Cook spent just 100 days in New Zealand during the course of his three visits. Marking the 250th anniversary of Cook’s first landing in 1769, 100 Days That Mapped a Nation is a book of short and focused chapters devoted to people, places and incidents.
Lay is known for both fiction and non-fiction but he has become something of an expert on Cook, with three novels about the explorer’s life and recent travel guides to Cook’s New Zealand and Australia.
Based on original ships’ logs and journals, the book is filled with historical illustrations as well as contemporary photographs, often by Lay himself. He condenses a massive amount of information with readable flair. Although it might lack the vital punch of a completely new contextualisation, it is a breezy and knowledgeable account.
Finally, the new and very desirable We Are Here changes the whole concept of “a book of maps”. Taking five years to complete, it is rich in facts and correlations. Chris Mcdowell, a data-scientist and a cartographer, has been well-matched with Tim Denee, a graphic designer. It is a book where a reader can “see” information.
While We Are Here might contain variants of traditional maps, it contains many more inventive visualisations. They are colourful and intriguing for the mind. Describing everything physical to social and cultural factors, the book includes the occurrence of deep earthquakes, places mentioned in New Zealand songs, the distribution of pests, every known fortified p site, and the lighting strikes in the past 10 years.
Each section starts with a definitional essay by a range of writers (including Tze Ming Mok and Nadine Anne Hura) but the book’s real pleasure remains in its infographics. It tells us what our pets do at night, how we get to work, describes child-poverty, gives a timeline of the growth, fall, and merger of parliamentary parties, as well as how we die. We Are Here isa ground-breaking book.