Creator Matthew Flinders

Date 1814

Map of Terra Australis or Australia, 1814, by Matthew Flinders (1774-1814), published just the day before he died. Having completed his circumnavigation in 1801-1803, Flinders, attempting to return to London in a damaged boat, pulled into Mauritius but was held under arrest for six years by the French (who, under Napoleon, were at war with the British in Europe), before completing his atlas of ’A Voyage to Terra Australis’.⁣.⁣⁣.⁣This map, one of the treasures of the National Library of Australia, and a defining moment in the cartography of the southern continent, is called ‘General chart of Terra Australis or Australia: showing the parts explored between 1798 and 1803 by M. Flinders Commr. of H.M.S. Investigator’ - “Plate 1.” Map shows tracks of Investigator, Cumberland and Porpoise, 1801-03, etc.⁣

Source: National Library of Australia