The Penguin New Zealand Atlas

Forest and Bird, Issue 296, 1 May 2000, Page 44

The Penguin New Zealand Atlas

Cartographic design by Barry Bradley, maps from Terralink NZ Ltd, 166pp hardback, Viking, Auckland 1999, RRP$59.95. The Penguin atlas supercedes the very useful Heinemann New Zealand Atlas of 1987. It’s the same size, the same scale (1:250,000), and just as useful: certainly a deal cheaper than buying sheet maps of the same scale to carry in the car. There have been quite a few changes in 12 years. New motorways surge north and south from Auckland (and other significant centres). Pine plantations seem to have doubled in size, northward up Ninety Mile Beach. Maori names get better exposure. In particular, many of the 220 names reintroduced with the Ngai Tahu Settlement Act have found their way onto the maps — the Southern Alps for example are now also Ka Tiritiri o Te Moana, Lake Ellesmere is Te Waihora. The text type is sometimes very small but necessarily so given the detail and the fact that some places now have three names. Cartographic styles have changed somewhat too, with the introduction of computer-based mapping. The predominant (and pleasant) greens and greys of the Heinemann atlas have been succeeded by mustard yellow and puces, separating lowland from higher country. This modelling of the landscape is effective, however, with the colours matched by a border key on each map to judge the elevation. Stronger greens are reserved for forests and wetlands; in higher country this can sometimes merge with the higher altitude purples. The division of New Zealand into useful regions is successful: it’s often possible to plan a journey from significant settlement to significant settlement, without having to consult two page openings. It is also nice to see the coast and adjacent areas represented as a continuous strip across facing pages rather than

slightly offset to accommodate more of the hinterland. An excellent gazetteer identifies towns, rivers, lakes and the like, with map coordinates to find them. Its major value for the outdoor enthusiast, however, is to fill in the surroundings of a New Zealand journey at a most useful scale.