I remember the old Reader’s Digest Atlas of Australia that my mother had when I was young. Half of it had detailed maps of the country, but the first half showed New South Wales with different overlays to show the distribution of different things – people, minerals, spoken languages, and so on.

Now there is a similar atlas online, and it’s absolutely marvellous!

NSW Land and Property Information, or the NSW Lands Department as we know them, have set of maps online for historians and other researchers to play with. It’s called the Atlas of New South Wales.

There is quite a bit of contextual information on the site. The most important part, though, and the most fun, is the Atlas Explorer. This  allows you to view, in map or satellite image form, the State of New South Wales or Australia as a whole. For example, you can look at the Changing State Borders map and move the slider along the timeline to see when the different colonies were established and the borders of New South Wales changed as a result.

You can zoom in and out, choose different types of information within each map, and for some maps you can slide along a timeline to see how things have changed over time. Here is a list of the broad categories of maps available:

• People
• Populations
• Health
• Housing
• Religion
• Indigenous Population
• Social Inclusion
• Crime
• Economy
• Labour Force
• Labour Underutilisation
• Economic Sectors
• taxation and Revenue
• Agriculture
• Forestry
• Fruit and Vegetables
• Oils and Grains
• Livestock
• History
• Heritage Properties
• European Settlement
• Changing State Borders
• Goldrush
• Elections
• Environment
• Geology
• Soils
• Vegetation
• National Parks
• Census 2006
• Populations Distribution
• Indigenous Population
• Housing Costs
• Income
• Dwellings
• Religion
• Languages

In the examples below I have looked at the maps for European settlement and moved along the timeline from 1820 to 1830. This maps shows how far Europeans settlement had spread in 1820:

This map shows the spread in 1830:

You can see how far Europeans had spread in ten short years. It had already overrun the Nineteen Counties and the Limits of Location. Port Macquarie had been established, and the spaces in between were being filled in. Compare this map with the Map of the Nineteen Counties on the State Records NSW website.

There is much, much more in the Atlas than I can describe here. Have a look around and let us know what you find.

Other resources:

Archives in Brief No. 22 Occupation of Crown Land Prior to 1856

Map of the Nineteen Counties

Ancestry seems to have added more Australian electoral rolls onto ancestry.com.au without any great fanfare. At least, if there was one I missed it, and I didn’t get an update about it. They now cover the period from 1903 to 1954, although the coverage isn’t complete, nor is it the same for each state.

Here is the list, blatantly cut-and-pasted from their website.

State and Years Presently Included:

This database currently includes electoral rolls for the following states and years. Those marked by asterisk have been indexed. Others are image-only.

• Australian Capital Territory: 1928*, 1929-31, 1935*, 1937*, 1943*, 1949*, 1954*
• New South Wales: 1930*, 1931-32, 1933*, 1934-35, 1936-37*, 1943*, 1949*, 1953-54*
• Northern Territory: 1922*, 1928, 1929*, 1930-31, 1934*, 1937*, 1943*, 1949*, 1954*
• Queensland: 1903*, 1905*, 1906, 1908-10, 1912, 1913*, 1914-17, 1919*, 1921*, 1922, 1925*, 1926, 1928-29, 1930*, 1931-32, 1934, 1936-37*, 1943*, 1949*, 1954*
• Tasmania: 1914*, 1915-17, 1919*, 1921, 1922*, 1925, 1928*, 1929-31, 1934, 1936-37*, 1943-44*, 1949*, 1954*
• Victoria: 1856*, 1903*, 1905-06, 1908, 1909*, 1910, 1912-13, 1914*, 1915-18, 1919*, 1920-22, 1924*, 1925-28, 1931*, 1932-35, 1936-37*, 1942-43*, 1949*, 1954*
• Western Australia: 1901*, 1905, 1906*, 1909, 1910-11*, 1912-15, 1916*, 1917-22, 1925*, 1926, 1928-30, 1931*, 1934, 1936-37*, 1943*, 1949*, 1954*

Take note of the years that are indexed and those that are not.

Full details here.

I did a test drive of a roll without going through the index. My Eason family was in Blayney until the mid-1950s, so I went searching for them in the 1954 roll. I know from searching previously for an earlier period that they were likely to be in the Commonwealth Division of Macquarie, State Division of Bathurst, Blayney Subdivision, so I went searching there first. I know that boundaries change over the years but you have to start somewhere and I started there.

I selected New South Wales, then 1954, then MacQuarie (as spelled by Ancestry). I then selected Bathurst, and E for the initial of my ancestor.

The page that came up was for the Subdivision of Bathurst, which I didn’t notice, so I then went back and searched for other divisions and subdivisions. Eventually I noticed that there were a number of pages for each selection, so I went back to Bathurst and there were 4 pages, of which I was on the first one. I moved on to page 2, which was still Bathurst, but page 3 was Blayney. There they were!

1954 Electoral Roll Macquarie Division Blayney Subdivision

You can see it’s not a brilliant image. I’ve also cropped the black border around the image. The surnames don’t quite disappear into the binding on the right hand page, although on other pages they do. Still, it’s available on your subscription at home, if you have one, or at your library, if you don’t, without looking at microfiche, which aren’t indexed either.