About St Mary's

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Maps

This page catalogues the evolution of SMS—and incidentally chronicles the evolution of mapping technology. From a 1934 map surveyed by an SMS alumnus to relatively basic maps from the 1990s to current satellite views. Click on the thumbnails for full size images.

SMS campus

Map of the school area created by late W E G J Watson (Class of 1927), apparently a qualified Ordnance Surveyor, in 1934, based on his surveys of 1928.  At the time it was Abu High School (AHS).  Aloysius D'Souza's (1951) daughter Deepika happened to meet Watson's sister (since deceased) in Cambridge UK in 1996, and picked this up.  The original map covers the area from Dilwara Road (near Toll Bar) to pretty close to Shallow Bay.  This is a small extract.
With apologies to Mr Watson, an update.  Move your mouse cursor over the newer structures; some link to photos.
Larger section of Watson's map, from Big Pitch in the southwest to Paddy's Bridge at north centre, with the colour update superimposed.
Aerial photograph of the SMS campus, taken in 1984 by Capt Fernandes (father of Bruce) from an IAF copter.
SMS campus from space. As we come full circle with technology, it's useful to compare this with Watson's (1927) hand drawn map above and to appreciate how darn accurate it was. More space shots below.

Abu region

 

Mount Abu, from mapsofindia.com (links to their original)
Generated at the ESRI web site, probably based on the GTOPO30 digital elevation models from EROS data centre.  The red dot is Abu, and Abu Road lies in the little dip to the east of that range — the railway track appears in the maps below.
Can't remember where this came from ... maybe NASA's index to the Apollo and space shuttle pictures.  If you were wondering where Sirohi was ...
Southern Rajasthan from Ahmedabad to Jaipur.  This and the one below were generated at the National Geographic web site, combining WorldSat satellite imagery, the Digital Chart of the World, GTOPO30 (suspected), and ESRI web mapping software.
Western India from Bombay to Delhi.  Beautiful job on the continental shelf and the Afghan ranges.

Satellite Views

Some of the scenes below are not entirely satellite images—satellites see the earth from directly above, not obliquely. The obliques are computer reconstructions based on (a) detailed elevation data, with (b) satellite photos draped over them. Because the elevation data aren't terribly high resolution, there are some aberrations, e.g. hills may not be shaped exactly as we know them, and the school buildings look flattened into the ground. But for wide angle views it's pretty close to the mark.

The first relatively detailed shots publicly available in 2006, from Space Imaging (now GeoEye). Some popular haunts are annotated in. Future astronauts: your assignment on Day One is to locate this scene. Shots below are from DigitalGlobe, with TerraMetrics elevation, distributed by Google Earth.
Looking from school towards town
Looking east from near school (right foreground) at Plummy.
Looking west from 2 km above Golden Horn (a sharpish rock in the foreground, slightly left of centre). SMS is in the mid distance on the left, and town is beyond.
School campus and surrounds.

Using Google Earth's free software you can create these images yourself, roam around, zoom in and out, for any place in the world.  Ulysses Menezes has a few 3D views of Abu at his site.