Mapping Australia felix : maps, myths and mitchell
- Authors: Coleridge, Edward
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: This investigation into the oeuvre of Thomas Mitchell, the Surveyor-General of New South Wales from 1827 to 1855, intends to reveal the remarkable opus of work he produced and enquire how he achieved it. The feat that won him fame was his discovery of the rich pasturelands and picturesque landscapes in an area that is now western Victoria, which he called Australia Felix. He matched this enthusiastic name with a finely illustrated and densely detailed two-volume journal of his three exploratory journeys - ostensibly to find where the River Darling met the Murray River. Mitchell learnt his trade as a surveyor and mapmaker in Wellington’s army fighting the French in Spain and Portugal, that theatre of the Napoleonic Wars termed the Peninsular War. The objective of this thesis is twofold. The first is the exposition of a rare and remarkable atlas of battlefield plans he was commissioned to survey at the conclusion of the war, a task which took him five years in the field, but was only completed and published 25 years later. There are only two known copies of this immense tome in Australian public libraries. The parallel plan is to relate it to the wealth of imagery with which he illustrated the journal of his expedition in 1836 that discovered Australia Felix. By the artifice of fusing the magnificent maps and landscapes in the atlas with the illustrations in the journals, together with his unpublished artwork, and commissioned structures, a metaphorical map of the new Promised Land can be attempted. Set in a period of revolution and European expansion, it is a study encompassing histories of nationalism, exploration, cartography, colonisation, indigenous relations, warfare, art, and theories of landscape art, architecture, neoclassicism and romanticism, and the aesthetics of the sublime, the beautiful and the picturesque.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
- Authors: Coleridge, Edward
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: This investigation into the oeuvre of Thomas Mitchell, the Surveyor-General of New South Wales from 1827 to 1855, intends to reveal the remarkable opus of work he produced and enquire how he achieved it. The feat that won him fame was his discovery of the rich pasturelands and picturesque landscapes in an area that is now western Victoria, which he called Australia Felix. He matched this enthusiastic name with a finely illustrated and densely detailed two-volume journal of his three exploratory journeys - ostensibly to find where the River Darling met the Murray River. Mitchell learnt his trade as a surveyor and mapmaker in Wellington’s army fighting the French in Spain and Portugal, that theatre of the Napoleonic Wars termed the Peninsular War. The objective of this thesis is twofold. The first is the exposition of a rare and remarkable atlas of battlefield plans he was commissioned to survey at the conclusion of the war, a task which took him five years in the field, but was only completed and published 25 years later. There are only two known copies of this immense tome in Australian public libraries. The parallel plan is to relate it to the wealth of imagery with which he illustrated the journal of his expedition in 1836 that discovered Australia Felix. By the artifice of fusing the magnificent maps and landscapes in the atlas with the illustrations in the journals, together with his unpublished artwork, and commissioned structures, a metaphorical map of the new Promised Land can be attempted. Set in a period of revolution and European expansion, it is a study encompassing histories of nationalism, exploration, cartography, colonisation, indigenous relations, warfare, art, and theories of landscape art, architecture, neoclassicism and romanticism, and the aesthetics of the sublime, the beautiful and the picturesque.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
How to make an entrance: Piranesi comes to Ballarat
- Authors: Coleridge, Edward
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Forum article
- Relation: Before/Now : journal of the Collaborative Research Centre in Australian History (CRCAH) Vol. 1, no. 1 (2019), p. 5-10
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: "The inside front cover of this publication carries an image of CRCAH's front door, the main gateway to the former Ballarat Gaol. It is a magnificent example of nineteenth century masonry work. The massive bluestone blocks were carved and chiselled into a grand classical edifice, making a fitting southern finale in scale and significance to the great range of buildings on either side of Lydiard Street. The remarkable architectural statement of a confident gold rich city runs from the ostentatious neo-classical railway station at the northern end past the Art Gallery, the Mining Exchange, the palatial former Post Office (now housing the studios of the university Arts Academy) and on along the facades of banks, hotels, theatres and churches, in a melody of styles from palladian to gothic (with some 20th century intrusions) down to the suitably 'redbrick' buildings of the Ballarat School of Mines. Here the road swings round to the west so the range of prison buildings bookend the whole composition with a dramatic solemn coda " -From forum article
- Authors: Coleridge, Edward
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Forum article
- Relation: Before/Now : journal of the Collaborative Research Centre in Australian History (CRCAH) Vol. 1, no. 1 (2019), p. 5-10
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: "The inside front cover of this publication carries an image of CRCAH's front door, the main gateway to the former Ballarat Gaol. It is a magnificent example of nineteenth century masonry work. The massive bluestone blocks were carved and chiselled into a grand classical edifice, making a fitting southern finale in scale and significance to the great range of buildings on either side of Lydiard Street. The remarkable architectural statement of a confident gold rich city runs from the ostentatious neo-classical railway station at the northern end past the Art Gallery, the Mining Exchange, the palatial former Post Office (now housing the studios of the university Arts Academy) and on along the facades of banks, hotels, theatres and churches, in a melody of styles from palladian to gothic (with some 20th century intrusions) down to the suitably 'redbrick' buildings of the Ballarat School of Mines. Here the road swings round to the west so the range of prison buildings bookend the whole composition with a dramatic solemn coda " -From forum article
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