The Map

Full Title:	The District Of Adelaide, South Australia, As Divided Into Country Sections. From The Trigonometrical Surveys Of Colonel Light, Late Survr. Genl.
Publisher:	John Arrowsmith, 35 Essex St., Strand, London
Date:	Febry 18th, 1839
Source:	Third Annual Report Of The Colonization Commissioners For South Australia To Her Majesty's Principal Secretary Of State For The Colonies 1838. Presented pursuant to Act 4 & 5 Will IV. c. 95. Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 13 May 1839.
Size:	64cm x 55cm (25¼" x 21½")
Scale:	1½" : Approx 1 British Statute Mile
Extent:	Gepps Cross - Athelstone - Flagstaff Hill - Semaphore
Description:	Folding paper map of Adelaide, South Australia, and the Adelaide Plains. Hand coloured. Folds into Report Of The Colonization Commissioners. Disbound but in very good condition. While this map was first printed in May of 1839, the survey work for it was actually carried out by Colonel William Light before June 1838, after which Light became the principal survey for the firm Light, Finniss & Co. When viewing this map please bear in mind that the names recorded on it are accurate to 1838.
	MAPCO also has a later edition of this map updated to 1840 on display. It is interesting to compare the 1839 edition of this map with the 1840 map, which records later purchasers of land across the Adelaide plains area.

How To View This Map There are two ways to navigate through this map of Adelaide. The map can be easily navigated by using the thumbnail images (above) to move directly to the section of the map of interest. Hovering the mouse pointer over the thumbnail images will display a pop-up message showing the present-day suburbs (northern and southern extent) covered by that map section. However, as this is a very early map of the Adelaide plains there are few familiar landmarks, which can map the map slightly confusing to refer to.

To overcome this problem large views of the map have been provided. The large views make navigating the map easier by clearly showing familiar roads and the few recognisable natural landmarks (such as creeks and the River Torrens) shown on the map. This method of navigation of the map images gives a full view of the map with four enlargable views (top left, top right, bottom left, and bottom right quarters), accessed by clicking the quarters of the large map image. The resultant enlarged views of the four separate quarters of the map then act as imagemaps, meaning that clicking on an area of the map of interest will lead to a further enlarged view of that part of the map. The final enlarged view page will include a small thumbnail image of the map, which will enable easy navigation to adjacent map sections. The easiest way is to click away and see where this leads.

Click Here For The Large Navigation Map

You can also view other early maps of Adelaide and South Australia from the "First Annual Report Of The Colonization Commissioners Of South Australia", dated 25 July 1836, and the "Second Annual Report Of The Colonization Commissioners Of South Australia" dated 22 December 1837.

Enjoy this wonderful early map of Adelaide!


Image Sizes and Download Times

The images of Arrowsmith's District Of Adelaide map displayed here have an average size of approximately 245KB. At 56KB dial-up connection speed each page will take about 30 seconds to fully load, although some pages can take as long as 80 seconds to load.

Please be patient, as it is worth the wait.