The simple answer to the question was this: It isn't upside-down at all. In a flip of convention, my giant, framed world map displays the southern hemisphere — Australia included — at the top. It's a twist, but not strictly speaking a distortion.

Why was the world map turned upside down?

Some people find navigating easier if they rotate maps so that up is in the direction that they are facing. There is a small tradition of printing road maps upside down to make this more convenient. ... It goes on to explain why the direction of clockwise is bias - because in the north sundial shadows move that way.

Is an upside down map correct?

There is nothing inevitable or intrinsically correct — not in geographic, cartographic or even philosophical terms — about the north being represented as up, because up on a map is a human construction, not a natural one.