The discovery and exploration of Australia has long been framed as both an act of chance and of growing curiosity, shaped by the vast seas of the southern hemisphere and guided by the faint patterns of the stars.
For centuries, European cartographers imagined a great southern continent, “terra australis incognita”, existing as a balance to the known lands of the north. The southern cross thus emerged as both a navigational guide and a symbolic marker of discovery, uniting the myths of the imagined continent with the experiences of explorers who first traced its outlines. Yet the story of Australia is as much about enduring Indigenous presence as it is about the voyages of European navigators.
The 111 maps and books of the Michael and Wendy Brown Collection tell this story from the creatures of ancient European myth, via the monsters of colonialism, to the behemoth of globalisation and modern multi-cultural Sydney.
