Job Lot: The cartographer

By GRAHAM REID

Rob Phillips is a 53-year-old cartographer consultant for the State-owned enterprise Terralink in Wellington. He earns between $55,000 and $65,000 a year.

You are a cartographer, a map-maker in other words?

Yes. These days they call us GIS consultants - geographic information system, a buzzword. But cartographer covers everything from surveying to printing, which encompasses all that I do. My career started in 1965 with Lands and Survey. Then I spent 22 years with the DSIR, where I became chief cartographer. During the restructures of the early 90s, the DSIR decided cartography wasn't their core business, so I returned to the Department of Survey and Land Information. In 1996 that became Terralink and Land Information New Zealand. I talk to people such as LINZ and we draw maps for them. We contract to dozens of people from private mapping organisations which put out street maps to individuals who want a small map for a brochure.

You have been a cartographer man and boy?

When I look back at my secondary-school geography books, they were all illustrated with very detailed little maps painted in watercolours. I've always been interested in maps. I really wanted to be an artist. I sat fine arts prelim at school but missed Roman lettering by a few marks - so that was the end of art school. I looked around the career advisory service and the one that took my fancy was maps. Apparently I told my mother when I was 5 that one day I would draw an atlas. Five years ago I produced my first atlas.

What training did you get at Lands and Survey?

You did a two-week induction course and there was a two-year probation period in which you shifted around to the various divisions doing different types of mapping and were trained by a senior cartographer. In those days everything was hand drawn. The irony was the first thing I had to do was Roman lettering because most of the maps had hand lettering. The maps were all hand drawn.

Presumably that hasn't happened for a while.

We produced the first map totally by computer in 1987, but it wasn't until 1997 that all the maps were done that way. When Terralink started I was the manager of topographic mapping. I had 12 staff and we rapidly converted to a computer base. The last map I actually drew was one of the last geological maps that was hand drawn. That was about five years ago.

You are one of a select few.

Very much so. I've been president of the Cartographic Society for years, though the society has slowed down somewhat from its membership of a couple of hundred. There wouldn't be more than maybe 100 to 150 practicing cartographers, some in universities looking at more academic angles rather than production. Terralink is the biggest firm in New Zealand. We have 140 staff and, of those, probably 25 to 30 are involved in map production. Then there the AA, Wises and a few other firms.

Taranaki or Mt Egmont? Did the decision you could use either name cause a problem?

One of the problems cartographers have is that the smallest positions tend to have the longest names, and trying to shoehorn them in is sometimes tricky. The Geographic Board has the absolute ruling on official names which appear on maps and we follow their edicts. The mountain is officially called "Mt Egmont or Taranaki" and that's the way it is displayed. With part of the Ngai Tahu settlement for the South Island there will be names in both Maori and English for the features. That does create work because the Maori name often tends to be quite long, and to fit it artistically on a map takes time. For some of the smaller contract work I may advise people that there is an official view, but they are the customer and it's up to them.

Do you have maps at home?

I have globes. I've been a collector and have about 30 stored around the place. I say I'm not a map collector, but I must have more than 1000. They stick with you after a 30-year career.