Book reviews: Atlas of Australian resources

Summary

The review assesses the first ten sheets of the Atlas of Australian Resources, published from 1952 and compiled since 1951 under Konrad Frenzel at the Department of National Development in Canberra. About fifty sheets were planned, covering natural conditions for life and economic activity and public and private measures to use them. The reviewer concentrates on cartographic presentation: polyconic projection, a usual scale of 1:6 million, restrained colours, and symbols encoding several variables. The available sheets cover minerals, climate, rainfall, temperature, groundwater, soils, agriculture, population, administrative areas and development projects. Particular features include rings of monthly climate maps, proportional circles with crop sectors, and volume-proportional spheres for population centres; the reviewer finds the development-project symbols ingenious but almost too complicated. Accompanying explanatory booklets of 8–20 pages contain sketches, profiles, diagrams and tables; sources, compilers and printing dates are identified, and metric equivalents accompany imperial measurements. The reviewer praises the sheets’ technical quality and thematic mapping possibilities, and anticipates that the completed atlas and its booklets will become an indispensable contribution to Australian geography.