Heritage et AL

An account of a voyage in search of La Perouse: undertaken by order of the Constituent Assembly of France, and performed in the years 1791, 1792, and 1793 in the Recherche and Esperance, ships of war, under the command of Rear-Admiral Bruni D'Entrecasteaux. Ref:  An account of a voyage in search of La Perouse, title page, M. Labillardiere,   1800, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1800 LABI Atlas. This three volume set was published in 1800. The first two volumes were acquired by the Leys Institute Library  Ponsonby  in 1905 and some decades later transferred to Sir George Grey Special Collections. Volume three, an atlas including many beautiful engraved illustrations, was recently purchased, thus completing the set over a century later.

Sir George Grey Special Collections holds a number of road, street and tramping track maps produced by the Automobile Association (AA). Ref: Automobile Association 'road surface' motor touring map..., 1930s, NZ map 372, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries.  The following information is from John McCrystal's book 'One hundred years of motoring in New Zealand'  which provides a great introduction to the history of the organisation. The AA was founded in 1903 and began as an automobile club for motoring enthusiasts. One of the earliest functions of the associations was signposting. In 1915, members of the Auckland branch of the AA began voluntarily marking routes. In 1925, Roy Champtaloup drew the first official AA road map by hand. Soon afterwards map making became more sophisticated, and for a time, both the Auckland and Wellington associations had their own cartographic departments. The oldest AA map in Sir George Grey Special Collect...