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Early Map of Sydney, Australia. 

Fantastic map of the region around Sydney, Australia, showing Port Hacking, Botany Bay, Port Jackson, and Broken Bay. This map was produced following the Freycinet report on an expedition led by Nicolas that attempted to place a French claim on western Australia.

The primary map shows the Sydney region in fantastic detail. Parramatta, Hawkesbury, Tongabee, Castle Hill, Brick-Field and Sydney are the only settlements named. Early maritime and land roads are shown. The map was published less than half a century after the first-ever map of Botany Bay and the Sydney area, produced as part of the Cook expedition.

The Baudin expedition was part of the Napoleonic-era French desire to have an increased role in the mapping of the lesser-known parts of the world, particularly in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. During this period, a number of important and rare early surveys of California, Australia, and the western coast of Latin America were produced.

The other two maps included show the Investigator Group of islands that lie in the Great Australian Bight. Located off the Eyre Peninsula. The lower chart renames South Australia "Napoleonland," and shows Wedge Island near Adelaide.

Louis Freycinet and the Baudin Expedition

The map that this is based on featured in the rarest of the volumes to come out of the Baudin expedition. When Nicolas Baudin left Le Havre in the Geographe and the Naturaliste in October 1800, he was embarking on a voyage meant to survey the shores of Australia. At this time, the British had established their presence in eastern Australia, but the western and southern portions of the continent remained unexplored and not necessarily claimed by the British. In other words, although ostensibly a scientific expedition, the French were also open to possible overseas expansion if the opportunity arose.

In the Naturaliste, commanded by Captain Jacques Hamelin, was Louis Freycinet, then only 21 years old. He had joined the French Navy in 1793 and was accompanied on this voyage by his brother, Louis-Henri, who would go on to become an admiral. Henri Freycinet also has his own geographical feature on this chart, the Havre Henri Freycinet.

Initially the ships, sometimes separated, made their way north up the western coast of Australia from Cape Leeuwin to Timor. Eventually, Baudin and the Geographe made for Van Diemen's Land and then returned toward the west. En route, they encountered British naval officer Matthew Flinders in the Investigator. Flinders, on his third Australian surveying mission, was heading to Sydney, from where he would begin a clockwise circumnavigation of the Australian continent, the first such voyage to ever do so. Flinders named the place where he and Baudin met Encounter Bay.

Baudin and Hamelin were reunited in Sydney, where both ships had come to recuperate in late 1801. While there, Baudin purchased a 29-foot vessel. He named it Casuarina and placed Freycinet, who had proved himself an adroit hydrographer under Hamelin, in command. With his new charge, Freycinet was to perform inshore surveys.

During the course of 1802, the Geographe and the Casuarina surveyed the southern coast of Australia (the Naturaliste had been sent back to France). They then sailed round the west coast to Timor, then back to Mauritius, where Baudin died. It was also where the Casuarina's career ended, as the ship was abandoned in favor of consolidating the crews on the Geographe. The ship returned home on March 25, 1804.