Old Map of Queensland by Stanford, 1904: Brisbane, Townsville, Cairns, Great Dividing Range, Torres Strait

Queensland, Edward Stanford’s authoritative rendering of the northeastern state, bears its original title simply, “Queensland,” and dates to 1904. Issued within Stanford’s distinguished atlas—first published in 1887 as the heir to John Arrowsmith’s London Atlas of 1858 after Stanford acquired Arrowsmith’s plates—this sheet reflects the thorough revisions of the atlas’s second edition from 1901. Stanford’s cartographic house fused scientific precision with luminous full-color lithography, presenting a polity newly situated within the Commonwealth of Australia while still shaped by late-colonial expansion. Relief is articulated with elegant hachures and punctuated by spot heights, while political districts are clearly tinted, inviting both synoptic reading and close study. The result is a document that captures Queensland at a transformative moment, balancing beauty, authority, and up-to-date geographic intelligence.

Design and topography are here harmonized with exceptional clarity. The sinuous eastern littoral tracks the Coral Sea, from the sand-fringed bays south of Brisbane to the complicated coastline facing the Gulf of Carpentaria, with nearby islands set off in precise stipple. The Torres Strait is studded with named islets and channels, signalling Queensland’s tropical gateway to New Guinea. Inland, the Great Dividing Range is drawn in fine hachures, cascading toward a web of rivers—Brisbane, Burnett, Mary, Fitzroy, Burdekin, Herbert and others—whose courses guide settlement and transport. District and county boundaries are cleanly color-washed, their typography meticulously graded to separate towns from pastoral out-stations. Spot heights punctuate key ranges and tablelands, while the coastal margin, capes and estuaries are crisply annotated, providing the navigator’s eye with the same confidence granted to the overland traveler.

Movement and communication—engines of Queensland’s modernity—thread the map. Roads and coach routes stitch interior districts to port towns, while railways are drawn as decisive strokes radiating from strategic hubs. Around Brisbane and the Darling Downs, lines scale the range toward Toowoomba and sweep westward into agricultural country; from Rockhampton, permanent way pushes inland toward the central plains; farther north, separate coastal sections at Mackay, Townsville and Cairns serve sugar ports and mining corridors, their eventual unification still in prospect. The Great Northern system reaches past Charters Towers toward the dry interior, as the Central Western tracks point on to Longreach and Winton. Most striking, telegraph lines leap across emptier spaces, including the famed trunk up Cape York Peninsula to Thursday Island, tying frontier outposts and lighthouse stations into a continental and imperial conversation.

The settlement pattern reads like a ledger of purpose and opportunity. Brisbane, the state capital, commands its river and the bays beyond, with suburbs and roadways etched into a growing metropolis. Rockhampton sits astride the Fitzroy system, a provisioning center for the interior; Gladstone claims a superb harbor just to the south. Northward, Mackay, Townsville and Cairns anchor discrete coastal economies—sugar, shipping, and access to mineral districts—while Bundaberg’s cane fields and distilleries speak to a fertile Burnett basin. Toowoomba crowns the Darling Downs as an inland market town, reached by the dramatic ascent over the range. Each urban name is nested within colored districts and counties, clarifying administration as well as trade, and together they chart Queensland’s pivot from scattered coastal entrepôts to an integrated network spanning rainforest, savannah, and reef-lined shore.

The map’s authority rests as much on pedigree as on execution. Stanford, successor to the Arrowsmith tradition, made his atlas one of the premier cartographic achievements of its era through relentless revision: new townships appear, routes extend, and boundaries are adjusted to mirror lived change. In this 1904 state, the judicious overlay of telegraph annotations, the calibrated palette of districts, and the disciplined use of hachures and spot heights exemplify best-practice geographic visualization at the turn of the century. It is a learned object, to be read as a chronicle of federation-era Queensland—its ports, ranges, rivers and remote stations—but also admired as a work of graphic art, where every line, tint and letterform contributes

Cities and towns on this map

• Brisbane
• Townsville
• Cairns
• Mackay
• Rockhampton
• Toowoomba
• Bundaberg
• Gladstone

Notable Features & Landmarks

• Full-color depiction of districts
• Hachured relief to indicate elevation
• Spot heights indicating significant elevations
• Detailed representation of settlements and counties
• Presence of roads and railroads
• Labeling of telegraph lines across the region
• Coastal lines and significant bodies of water, including the Gulf of Carpentaria
• Nearby islands, including some in the Torres Strait

Historical and design context

• Mapmaker/Publisher: Edward Stanford
• Date of creation: 1904
• Historical context: Part of an atlas first issued in 1887, succeeding John Arrowsmith’s London Atlas of 1858 after Stanford acquired the plates; belongs to the second edition published in 1901
• Design and style: Full-color lithography with relief shown by hachures and spot heights
• Historical significance: Regarded as one of the premier cartographic works of its era, illustrating artistic and technical achievements
• Updates: Meticulously revised across editions to reflect changes in geography and settlement patterns

Please double check the images to make sure that a specific town or place is shown on this map. You can also get in touch and ask us to check the map for you.

This map looks great at every size, but I always recommend going for a larger size if you have space. That way you can easily make out all of the details.

This map looks amazing at sizes all the way up to 70in (180cm). If you are looking for a larger map, please get in touch.

The model in the listing images is holding the 16x20in (40x50cm) version of this map.

The fifth listing image shows an example of my map personalisation service.

If you’re looking for something slightly different, check out my collection of the best old maps to see if something else catches your eye.

Please contact me to check if a certain location, landmark or feature is shown on this map.

This would make a wonderful birthday, Christmas, Father's Day, work leaving, anniversary or housewarming gift for someone from the areas covered by this map.

This map is available as a giclée print on acid free archival matte paper, or you can buy it framed. The frame is a nice, simple black frame that suits most aesthetics. Please get in touch if you'd like a different frame colour or material. My frames are glazed with super-clear museum-grade acrylic (perspex/acrylite), which is significantly less reflective than glass, safer, and will always arrive in perfect condition.