World Heritage

Queensland is blessed with natural beauty and this is recognised with five of the 16 World Heritage Listed sites in Australia on our turf. World heritage listed areas are noted for very special cultural and natural values of extraordinary proportions. 

The Great Barrier Reef was the first Queensland site to be recognised for its representation of major stages of the earth’s evolutionary history and as the largest coral reef system on the planet.

Gondwana Rainforests of Australia straddles Queensland’s southern border and encompasses Lamington, Springbrook, Mt Barney and the Main Range National Parks. This area is the most extensive remaining area of sub-tropical rainforest and is home to nearly all of the world's Antarctic beech rainforest.

Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world and is noted for its exceptional beauty, ever-evolving coastal sand dune formations and habitats, as well as 250km of sandy beaches.

A slightly prehistoric twist sees ancient Australian mammals perserved in limestone at the Riversleigh Fossil Mammal site in Outback Queensland on the list. Some fossil deposits date back 25 million years.

Extending from Cooktown to Townsville and including the Daintree Rainforest, the Wet Tropics Rainforest of Australia protects Australia’s largest remaining area of wet tropical rainforest with cultural significance for the Aboriginal people who have called this area home for thousands of years.