Book reviews: Atlas of Australian resources

Summary

This review assesses the completed Atlas of Australian Resources, prepared by Australia’s Department of National Development over nearly a decade, with particular attention to its final ten sheets. The atlas comprises 30 sheets containing 52 maps, most depicting the Australian continent and Tasmania at a scale of 1:6 million, together with separate commentaries that provide explanations, statistics, diagrams, supplementary sketches, authorship, and source references. The reviewed thematic maps cover geology, drainage systems, surface-water conservation, vegetation regions, croplands, livestock distribution, mineral industries, power and fuel, manufacturing, and immigration. Through layered color schemes, proportional symbols, dot mapping, graphs, and inset maps, the atlas demonstrates Australia’s pronounced spatial contrasts. Agricultural production, manufacturing, infrastructure, and population are concentrated primarily in the southeast and southwest, whereas the interior is characterized by aridity, highly variable drainage, extensive deserts, sparse settlement, and limited development. The reviewer particularly values the atlas’s breadth, analytical commentaries, and ability to relate environmental conditions to economic and demographic patterns. Some cartographic limitations are nevertheless identified: adherence to a uniform continental scale leaves large empty areas on certain sheets, while dense detail produces very small lettering and colors that are occasionally difficult to distinguish. A smaller-scale overview supplemented by larger-scale maps of important regions would improve readability. Despite these shortcomings, the atlas is judged an impressive, information-rich, and finely produced national undertaking that makes Australia’s resources, regional structure, and extreme geographical disparities readily intelligible to an international readership.