Australia’s National Heritage
“Our heritage provides an enduring golden thread 
that binds our diverse past with our life today 
and the stories of tomorrow.”

A message from the Minister

Welcome to the second edition of Australia’s National Heritage celebrating the 87 special places on Australia’s National Heritage List. 
Australia’s heritage places are a source of great national pride. Each and every site tells a unique Australian story. These places and stories have laid the foundations of our shared national identity upon which our communities are built. 
The treasured places and their stories featured throughout this book represent Australia’s remarkably diverse natural environment. Places such as the Glass House Mountains and the picturesque Australian Alps. Other places celebrate Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture—the world’s oldest continuous culture on earth—through places such as the Brewarrina Fish Traps and Mount William Stone Hatchet Quarry. Australia’s built heritage is highlighted through sites as varied as the Echuca Wharf and the Mawson’s Huts Historic Site in Antarctica.
Several places featured in this book, like Bondi Beach, are well known both here and overseas. Bondi, arguably the home of Australia’s first surf lifesaving club, is one of the world’s most famous beaches and epitomises Australia’s open-to-all-comers beach culture.
Other locations on the National Heritage List are important for combining remarkable natural and Indigenous qualities. Witjira-Dalhousie Springs, for example, is in the largest artesian system in the world: Australia’s Great Artesian Basin. These Springs are special, not only as a home for distinct species of plants and animals, but they also hold significant meaning to the Indigenous people of Australia as a place long associated with traditional stories and songs.
Our heritage places and stories are increasingly recognised as an important driver of regional economies. Places on our National Heritage List are drawcards for domestic and international tourists. When people visit these places they are helping others build sustainable livelihoods through their support of local businesses and service industries in towns and cities across Australia. This is why in 2009 the Australian Government provided $60 million through the $650 million Jobs Fund initiative for high priority heritage conservation projects; the largest ever investment in Australia’s heritage.  
I hope you enjoy reading Australia’s National Heritage, the richness and diversity of Australia’s stories are wonderful to check out. 

The Hon Peter Garrett AM MP
Australian Government Minister for 
the Environment, Heritage and the Arts

A message from the Chairman of the Australian Heritage Council

There are few more exciting or stimulating tasks than to identify the natural, historic and Indigenous places that are significant to all Australians.
The Australian Heritage Council’s task is to assess nominated places against the National Heritage criteria to determine if they are of outstanding value to our nation.
Since the Council first embarked on the listing process six years ago we have found it an intriguing journey. It has been a voyage through the issues that define us as a country and a people. We are relishing the challenges of our role and are inspired by the passion, care and concern we have seen for these places in their community and the community at large. Places have been nominated and promoted by private citizens, heritage bodies and state, federal and local governments.
The List links familiar and iconic places such as the Sydney Opera House and the Melbourne Cricket Ground with lesser known places such as Budj Bim, which is the site of one of the oldest aquaculture systems in Australia. It links sites of great national celebrations, such as Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building, with places of sorrow and disquiet such as Tasmania’s Port Arthur and the Myall Creek Massacre site. It also links places of great historic moments such as Captain Cook’s Landing Place and events that have taken mythological standing such as the site of Ned Kelly’s last stand at Glenrowan and the Tree of Knowledge at Barcaldine.
We have been engaged in some ambitious and testing assessments—the Australian Alps which spread across two States and the A.C.T. and include multiple layers of significance—Natural, Cultural and Indigenous. As a Council we have sought out places that have such complexity—we find it one of the most interesting features of our heritage. 
These and other places comprise the Australian story. Identifying them, telling their tales and providing a framework for their protection is the purpose of the National Heritage List. I hope that what we manage to do with the National Heritage List will inspire a greater awareness and support for heritage throughout Australia and perhaps it will help us know more about ourselves as a nation and a people and as custodians of this continent.
The AHC members who have worked on the development of this list are: 
Mr Roger Beale AO
Mr Rodney Dillon
Dr Jacqueline Huggins AM FAHA
Mr Michael Kennedy
Dr Jane Lennon AM
The Hon Richard Lewis (associate member)
Dr Libby Mattiske
Mr Jonathan Mills (associate member)
Dr Denis Saunders AM
Dr Gaye Sculthorpe
Adjunct Professor Sharon Sullivan AO
Mr Howard Tanner
Associate Professor Peter Valentine 
Dr Richard Walley OAM
All the councillors would like to acknowledge and thank the staff of the Heritage Division for their great commitment to our common purpose.
Tom Harley
Chairman of the Australian Heritage Council

Introduction

Heritage: what is or may not inherited; that which belongs to one by reason of birth; inheritance; something passed down to future generations

Australia is a complex and diverse nation composed of both Indigenous and immigrant peoples from nearly 200 countries. But it is our common heritage that makes us distinctively Australian. 
By recognising our heritage—our past, our significant places and the source of our values—we can better understand our special place in the world.
Heritage can be something you can touch and see but it can also be things you can’t, like music, stories, spoken history and traditions. Heritage represents all the things that make Australia and Australians unique. It helps us remember where we came from and where we belong. Heritage is all the things that make up our story, tangible and intangible, and as we value them we must protect them.
Through conservation, recognition and promotion of the cultural identity of all Australians we can contribute to a greater understanding and acceptance of our diversity. Ultimately this will contribute to strengthening our community and our place in the world. 
The aim of this publication is to provide a glimpse of the places in the National Heritage List and explain why they were listed.
The guide illustrates the great diversity of outstanding heritage places within Australia.

The National Heritage List

From the places that define who we are and tell the story of our country’s past, to the places that reflect our evolving heritage and where we are going, the National Heritage List represents why Australia is as it is.
The National Heritage List is Australia’s list of places with outstanding heritage value to our nation. The places in the National Heritage List are those that are so special to all of us that they are considered to have National Heritage value. To qualify for this they must meet one or more statutory criteria. The List comprises natural, historic and Indigenous places that are of outstanding significance to Australians.
Information on a place’s National Heritage values is recorded in the List, and only these values are protected by the Australian Government. A place may have natural, Indigenous or historic values, or any combination of the three.
The Australian Heritage Council assesses the values of nominated places against the National Heritage criteria and makes recommendations to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts about listing. The final decision on listing is made by the Minister.
So important are the heritage values of these places that they are protected by Australian Government laws and through special agreements with state and territory governments and with private owners.
The National Heritage List, which commenced on 1 January 2004, was established through amending the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and by establishing the Australian Heritage Council, which assesses nominations and advises the Minister on matters relating to National Heritage values.

1.	Budj Bim National Heritage Landscape
2.	Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens
3.	Dinosaur Stampede National Monument, Lark Quarry
4.	Kurnell Peninsula: Captain Cook’s Landing Place
5.	Gold Strike
6.	Mawson’s Huts and Mawson’s Huts Historic Site
7.	Brewarrina Aboriginal Fish Traps (Baiame’s Ngunnhu)
8.	Port Arthur Historic Site
9.	Glenrowan Heritage Precinct
10. Sydney Opera House
11. Fremantle Prison
12. First Government House Site
13. 20th Century Architecture
14. Recherche Bay (North East Peninsula) Area
15. Richmond Bridge
16. HMVS Cerberus
17. Melbourne Cricket Ground
18. Tree of Knowledge
19. South Australia’s Old and New Parliament Houses
20. Dirk Hartog Landing Site 1616 – Cape Inscription Area
21. Batavia Shipwreck Site and Survivor Camps Area 1629 – Houtman Abrolhos
22. Hermannsburg Historic Precinct
23. Australian War Memorial and Anzac Parade
24. North Head, Sydney
25. Point Nepean Defence Sites and Quarantine Station Area
26. Old Parliament House and Curtilage
27. Glass House Mountains National Landscape
28. Rippon Lea House and Gardens
29. Flemington Racecourse
30. Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, Lion Island, Long   Island and Spectacle Island Nature Reserves
31. Warrumbungle National Park
32. Royal National Park and Garawarra State Conservation Area
33. Grampians National Park (Gariwerd)
34. Stirling Range National Park
35. Flora Fossil Site, Yea
36. Ediacara Fossil Site
37. Sydney Harbour Bridge
38. Echuca Wharf
39. Australian Fossil Mammal Sites
40. Fraser Island
	41. Gondwana Rainforests of Australia
42. Great Barrier Reef
43. Greater Blue Mountains
44. Heard and McDonald Islands
45. Kakadu National Park
46. Lord Howe Island Group
47. Macquarie Island
48. Purnululu National Park
49. Shark Bay
50. Tasmanian Wilderness
51. Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park
52. Wet Tropics of Queensland
53. Willandra Lakes Region
54. Dampier Archipelago
55. Former High Court of Australia
56. Cascades Female Factory
57. Coal Mines Historic Site
58. Darlington Probation Station
59. Cockatoo Island
60. Hyde Park Barracks
61. Kingston and Arthurs Vale Historic Area
62. Old Government House and the Government Domain
63. Old Great North Road
64. Wave Hill Walk-Off Route
65. Point Cook Air Base
66. Brickendon Estate
67. Woolmers Estate
68. High Court–National Gallery Precinct
69. Bonegilla Migrant Camp – Block 19
70. Bondi Beach
71. Mount William Stone Hatchet Quarry
72. Cyprus Hellene Club – Australian Hall
73. Myall Creek Massacre and Memorial Site
74. Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout
75. Australian Alps
76. QANTAS Hangar – Longreach
77. Elizabeth Springs
78. Witjira-Dalhousie Springs
79. Porongurup National Park
80. Cheetup rock shelter

Budj Bim National Heritage Landscape
Victoria
Sacred to the Gunditjmara people, the Budj Bim National Heritage Landscape is home to the remains of potentially one of Australia’s largest aquaculture systems.
For thousands of years the Gunditjmara people flourished through their ingenious methods of channelling water flows and systematically harvesting eels to ensure a year round supply. Here the Gunditjmara lived in permanent settlements, dispelling the myth that Australia’s Indigenous people were all nomadic.
Dating back thousands of years, the area shows evidence of a large, settled Aboriginal community systematically farming and smoking eels for food and trade in what is considered to be one of Australia’s earliest and largest aquaculture ventures.
This complex enterprise took place in a landscape carved by natural forces and full of meaning to the Gunditjmara people.
More than 30 000 years ago the Gunditjmara witnessed Budj Bim—an important creation being—reveal himself in the landscape. Budj Bim (known today as Mt Eccles) is the source of the Tyrendarra lava flow, which as it flowed to the sea changed the drainage pattern in this part of western Victoria, creating large wetlands. 
The Gunditjmara people developed this landscape by digging channels to bring water and young eels from Darlots Creek to low lying areas. They created ponds and wetlands linked by channels containing weirs. Woven baskets were placed in the weirs to harvest mature eels.
These engineered wetlands provided the economic basis for the development of a settled society with villages of stone huts, built using stones from the lava flow. Early European accounts of Gunditjmara describe how they were ruled by hereditary chiefs.
With European settlement in the area in the 1830s came conflict. Gunditjmara fought for their land during the Eumerella wars, which lasted more than 20 years.
As this conflict drew to an end in the 1860s, many Aboriginal people were displaced and the Victorian government began to develop reserves to house them. 
Some Aboriginal people refused to move from their ancestral land and eventually the government agreed to build a mission at Lake Condah, close to some of the eel traps and within sight of Budj Bim.
The mission was destroyed in the 1950s but the Gunditjmara continued to live in the area and protect their heritage. The mission lands were returned to the Gunditjmara in 1987.
The Gunditjmara manage the Indigenous heritage values of the Budj Bim National Heritage Landscape through the Windamara Aboriginal Corporation and other Aboriginal organisations. A large part of the area is the Mt Eccles National Park, managed by Parks Victoria.
National Heritage List: 20 July 2004

Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens
Victoria 
Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building is one of a group of grand monuments and buildings born from the world exhibition movement of the 1800s, which includes the Eiffel Tower and London’s Crystal Palace.
The Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens were designed and built to host an international exhibition in 1880. In the decades before this event, Victoria had been experiencing a period of marked economic growth resulting from the discovery of vast goldfields in the colony. Wealth from this booming economy was being directed to grand and symbolic projects intended to reflect the status and position of Victoria, and the Australian colonies, on the world stage. Hosting the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition was an expression of this. 
In Australia, as in other countries, the international exhibitions were always matters of pride and an important mechanism for introducing the world to the wealth, capacity and culture of the city and country. Exhibitions were particularly important to countries trying to establish a global profile, to open the door to trade and closer international relations with others, and were often a symbol of the host’s aspirations for nationhood.
Most exhibitions had a ‘Palace of Industry’ or ‘Great Hall’. The Exhibition Building, as we now know it, was the Great Hall for the 1880 and 1888 international exhibitions.
The design of the Great Hall included many features reminiscent of churches and basilicas at the time, such as naves, aisles, a dome and a cruciform floor plan. It was, in effect, designed to be a ‘temple’ to industry.
The Carlton Gardens were designed as a ‘pleasure garden’ setting for the building, and also to reflect the scientific interest in gardens at the time.
Three decades later, when soon-to-be Prime Minister Edmund Barton expressed a desire to have as many Australians as possible attend the opening of Australia’s first Federal Parliament, he turned to the nation’s largest and arguably grandest building—the Royal Exhibition Building.
On 9 May 1901 more than 12 000 people listened to speeches, sang a hymn and the national anthem and watched as politicians were sworn in and a new nation was born.
It would be another four months before the national flag was flown at the Exhibition Building on 3 September 1901, following a national flag designing competition, which attracted more than 32 000 entries. 
The Royal Exhibition Building has had a varied role in the life of the nation, from housing war memorabilia for the Australian War Memorial, to becoming a migrant reception centre and even a venue for weightlifting and basketball during the Melbourne Olympic Games. In between these diverse uses, exhibitions continued to be held in the Royal Exhibition Building and are still held today.
National Heritage List: 20 July 2004
World Heritage List: 2004

Dinosaur Stampede National Monument, 
Lark Quarry
Queensland
About 95 million years ago in central Queensland several moments of frantic activity were preserved in stone.
Located at Lark Quarry Conservation Park, 110 kilometres south-west of Winton in central Queensland, the Dinosaur Stampede National Monument features unique evidence of a dinosaur stampede with almost 4000 dinosaur footprints clearly visible in an area of just 210 square metres. The footprints and their interpretation provide scientific underpinning for the famous stampede scenes in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park and the BBC’s award-winning series, Walking with Dinosaurs (1999).
A mixed group of perhaps 180 chicken-size carnivorous theropods known as Coelurosaurs (Skartopus species) and Bantam to emu-sized herbivorous ornithopods (Wintonopus species) were distributed by the arrival of a single much larger carnivore: a theropod, named Tyrannosauropus, which may have been as much as 10 metres long with 50 centimetre footprints.
Fleeing the larger dinosaur, the Skartopus and Wintonopus are thought to have stampeded past Tyrannosauropus, leaving thousands of footprints in the surrounding mudflat.
Not long after the incident, the water level began to rise, covering the tracks with sandy sediments before the mud had dried.
Over time, the footprints were buried beneath sand and mud as the lake and river levels continued to rise and fall. Over thousands of millennia, this rich river plain with its sandy channels, swamps and lush lowland forest dried up. The sediment covering the footprints was compressed to form rock.
Today, Lark Quarry is a dry landscape of spinifex and lancewood dotted across gullies and steep escarpments. In the 1960s while fossicking for opals, a local station manager, Glen Seymour, discovered what he thought were fossilised bird tracks, but it wasn’t until scientists visited the area in 1971 that the footprints began to reveal their true story.

It is a rare snapshot of a few seconds of activity during the age of the dinosaurs preserved against all probability for 95 million years, which has become the benchmark for study of dinosaur footprints and behaviour. The arid setting where we find these sediments, reveal lowland riparian forests of the past and evoke thousands of millennia of landscape evolution in Australia.
Today this outstanding site is covered by a modern centre which was completed in 2002 as a Centenary of Federation project.
The new building features ecologically sustainable design elements and protects the main collection of footprints from damage by stabilising temperature and humidity fluctuations, stopping water running over the footprints and keeping people and wildlife off the footprints. 
National Heritage List: 20 July 2004

Kurnell Peninsula: Captain Cook’s Landing Place
New South Wales

When Lieutenant (later Captain) James Cook first set foot on Australian soil at Kurnell Peninsula Headland in Botany Bay, New South Wales, he made history.
This moment led to the British settlement of the Australian continent. It altered forever the way of life for Indigenous Australians, dramatically expanded the world’s scientific understanding of the continent’s unique flora and fauna and ultimately led to the creation of a new nation—Australia.
Originally sent by the British Admiralty to the southseas to observe the transit of the planet Venus across the face of the sun, Cook spent several months circling and surveying New Zealand’s North and South Islands. Later the Endeavour set sail for Van Diemen’s Land, which Cook believed to be the south-eastern tip of New Holland. Southerly gales propelled the ship north and, on 19 April 1770, Lieutenant Zachary Hicks, Cook’s second in command, sighted land. This was the ‘East Coast of New Holland’, first named Point Hicks and now Cape Everard, on the east coast of Victoria.
The Endeavour sailed north, close to land in the Illawarra region (near Wollongong), but the surf was too rough for them to get ashore.
Sailing northwards along the coast, Cook found the first safe harbour to drop anchor on 29 April 1770. In addition to observing the land, Cook was searching for fresh water to sustain the crew on its voyage. 
Approaching the shore by longboat, the crew noted, on what is now known as Kurnell Peninsula, the presence of a ‘small village consisting of about six or eight houses’. With no means of understanding each other’s language, confusion marked the initial contact between the landing party and the local people. 
“I thought that they beckoned us to come ashore, but in this we were mistaken, for as soon as we put the boat in they again came to oppose us… I fired a musket between the two which had no effect… one of them took up a stone and threw at us…” 
– (Cook’s journal, 29 April 1770)

Cook’s party explored the area over the next eight days, gathering food, collecting scientific samples and observing this new land. Despite several encounters, Cook was not able to establish effective communication with the local people, who maintained a wary distance. The crew noted local activities such as camping, fishing, using trees for bark and food, collecting shells and cooking fish.
The Europeans were not the only ones recording first impressions. ‘Captain Cook stories’ exist in parts of Aboriginal Australia the explorer never visited. In some Aboriginal stories, Kurnell Peninsula is called ‘The Foot’, the place where Cook’s foot, first connected with Australian land. 
National Heritage List: 20 September 2004

Gold Strike
Victoria
‘We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties.’ 
– Eureka Oath, November, 1854
Eureka Stockade Gardens
At daybreak on 3 December 1854 a government force of British soldiers and Victorian police attacked an entrenchment of 120 aggrieved gold miners at Ballarat. The Eureka Rebellion became one of Australia’s defining moments.
The Eureka Stockade Gardens mark the site set aside in the late 1800s to acknowledge the Eureka Rebellion of 1854, an event that gave rise to Australia’s unique tradition of a ‘fair go’. 
Events like the Eureka Stockade have shaped Australia’s political and social development. The small band of 120 miners, made up of more than 16 nationalities gathered in a wooden stockade, were attacked at dawn by around 400 soldiers and police officers. By the end of the conflict 33 miners and five soldiers were dead.
The rebellion was fuelled by discontent with the mining licence, which the diggers claimed was taxation without representation and a tax upon labour. More generally, the uprising was sparked by a desire for fair treatment for all. The rebellion led to a fairer goldfields system with the licence replaced by the cheaper Miners Right, giving miners the right to vote. Many see this act as the first steps on the path to Australia’s democracy.
In addition to helping build an egalitarian and diverse nation made up of people from different backgrounds, the legacy of the gold rush has been far reaching and continues to be felt today.
National Heritage List: 8 December 2004
Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park, Victoria
In 1851 the burning intensity of gold fever lured tens of thousands of immigrants to Australia, from all over the world, eager to strike it rich. Within 10 years, Australia’s population trebled to more than one million people.
Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park in Victoria is the most outstanding gold rush era site in Australia in terms of the diversity of types, integrity and time-depth of its collection of mining sites. The miners huts, Chinese market gardens, mine headframes, stone footings and shallow shafts in a bush environment gives us a rare snapshot of how people lived and worked in the harsh environment of the goldfields.
Gold and the search for this precious metal, has played a major role in how our nation has developed. Its influence has left us with the enduring legacy of exploration, immigration, research, and industrial booms. 
The gold seekers who came to this part of the world brought an enormous range of skills, professions and cultures. The work they did in places such as Ballarat and Bendigo ushered in a long period of prosperity and the development of a modern industrial base in Australia.
The first major gold rushes took place in 1851 near Bathurst in New South Wales and at Ballarat in Victoria. 
A sheep station hut keeper, Christopher Thomas Peters, had also found gold in Castlemaine, Victoria but kept his discovery quiet. He and three friends earned a year’s pay in a month by chipping gold from rocks with a hammer and chisel. 
However, word of the fabulous richness of the diggings soon got out and thousands of people started to explore the creeks around the area, finding gold close to the surface. Major gold rushes followed in Queensland from 1866 and Western Australia from 1892, with thousands of hopeful prospectors joining the hunt each time.
National Heritage List: 27 January 2005

Mawson’s Huts and Mawson’s Huts Historic Site
Antarctica
Even the world’s most ferocious winds and coldest temperatures, formidable mountains and crevasses could not destroy the incredible spirit and courage of Sir Douglas Mawson during his epic treks in Antarctica.  
This spirit is epitomised in Mawson’s huts which can still be found standing in this hostile environment. Thanks to the ingenuity and determination of pioneering Australian explorers and scientists, the mysteries of this vast, remote land continue to be revealed, and answers to some of the world’s most pressing environmental problems sought. 
As international scientific interest in Antarctica grew in the late 1800s, it sparked the interest of notable Australian scientists including mining engineer and geologist Sir Douglas Mawson, who was a man with a singular passion for the Antarctic environment. His plans to explore the continent caught the nation’s imagination, and when he set off in 1911 into a largely unknown environment, Australians rallied behind him, confident that his explorations of the continent would help enrich Australia’s scientific knowledge.
Sir Douglas Mawson established Australia’s first base for scientific and geographical discovery in Antarctica at Cape Denison on the continent’s northern coast, 3000 kilometres south of Hobart. 
He and his team designed and built five simple huts (one hut, now presumed destroyed, was located at the Western Base, on Shackleton Ice Shelf on Queen Mary Land Station). It was from these huts he set out to learn as much as he could about the forces that carved out Antarctica. His work, on that trip as well as the survey work on subsequent trips to the continent, were instrumental in Australia later claiming 42 per cent of Antarctica as Australian Territory.
Between 1912 and 1913, Mawson’s huts provided the basis for his team’s heroic exploration of the Antarctic landscape as well as the study of weather, geology and magnetics, and the pioneering use of wireless communication on the Antarctic Continent. They battled intense winds, icy conditions and long periods of isolation to gather this material. 
In 1947 the Australian Government established the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions with Sir Douglas Mawson as one of the key advisers to the Government on Antarctic policy. He recommended the establishment of a permanent base on the continent and in 1954 Mawson Station was built and still operates.
Today, Australian scientists, who enjoy an impressive international reputation, are at the forefront of Antarctic research and their investigations and ongoing work on the frozen continent promise exciting future discoveries.
In coming years it is anticipated that Australian research will reveal important data about climate change, space, weather, ocean productivity and ice cap thickness. This follows on from discoveries in the last 50 years about Antarctica’s vital role in the generation of much of Australia’s weather. Importantly, Australia continues to work to clean up and contain abandoned work sites in Antarctica.
National Heritage List: 27 January 2005

Brewarrina Aboriginal Fish Traps 
(Baiame’s Ngunnhu)
New South Wales

Long before Europeans came to Australia, Aboriginal communities were applying advanced knowledge of engineering, physics, water ecology and animal migration to catch large numbers of fish in traps like the Brewarrina Aboriginal Fish Traps.
The significance of these early Aboriginal technologies that demonstrate the sophisticated understanding by Aboriginal people of the land, and its natural resources, are steeped in legend.
The story of the Brewarrina Aboriginal Fish Traps, known as the ‘Ngunnhu’ to the local Ngemba people, shows how an ancestral creation being designed and created an important fishing venture that supported many Aboriginal communities in the Brewarrina region in north-west New South Wales.
According to Aboriginal history, the Ngemba people were facing famine after a major drought had dried the river. Baiame, a creation being who saw their plight, designed a gift for the Ngemba—an intricate series of fish traps in the dry river bed.
Baiame produced the design for the Ngunnhu by casting his net over the river course. His two sons built the fish traps to Baiame’s design.
Baiame then showed the old men of the Ngemba how to call the rain through dance and song. Days of rain followed and filled the river course, flooding Baiame’s net and bringing with it thousands of fish. The old men rushed to block the entry of the stone traps, herding fish through the pens.
Baiame instructed that, although the Ngemba people were to be custodians of the fishery, maintenance and use of the traps should be shared with other tribes in the area.
Over time, the Ngemba people studied fish migration in relation to season and river flows to apply innovative new methods of working the fish traps more efficiently, and to ensure that the river was not overfished.
Baiame wanted the other tribes in the region, including the Morowari, Paarkinji, Weilwan, Barabinja, Ualarai and Kamilaroi to use the Ngunnhu.
He allocated particular traps to each family group and made them responsible under Aboriginal law for their use and maintenance. Neighbouring tribes were invited to the fish traps to join in great corroborees, initiation ceremonies, and meetings for trade and barter.
The Ngunnhu was, and continues to be, a significant meeting place to Aboriginal people with connections to the area.
National Heritage List: 3 June 2005

Port Arthur Historic Site
Tasmania

At once beautiful and darkly tragic, Tasmania’s Port Arthur Historic Site is a place of contradictions that has helped shape Australia’s colonial past.
Hundreds of thousands of visitors each year are drawn to experience the paradox of this brutal penal settlement which sits quietly on the Tasman Peninsula surrounded by verdant lawns and English oaks.
Part of the public fascination with Port Arthur is its many-layered history and the role it has played in shaping aspects of Australian society from the 1830s to the present day.
It was here that many transported and re-offending convicts spent their days. Its isolation and formidable geography gave it a feared reputation. Over time, and after transportation of convicts ended, the buildings were used for many years to accommodate convict invalids, paupers and ‘lunatics’. The site has continued to evolve through phases of significant development, decline and change, bushfires, demolitions, constructions, major landscape alterations and restoration work.

The buildings, ruins and other site features that remain today, are now a major tourist attraction and Australia’s most vivid and well-known reminder of its convict beginnings. The tragic loss of 35 people at a gunman’s hand in 1996 added another emotionally powerful layer to its history and gave it a new national significance and led to Australia’s tightened gun laws.
Port Arthur remains a physical chronicle of a dramatic part of Australia’s history. Its 60 or so buildings and picturesque landscape offer visitors a challenging mix of both beauty and horror and have helped the site to become Tasmania’s most popular tourist destination.
National Heritage List: 3 June 2005

Glenrowan Heritage Precinct
Victoria
With his blackened armour made from ploughshares, Ned Kelly has been an enduring presence in the Australian psyche for more than 125 years. 
Ned Kelly: bushranger, larrikin, and to some, hero, is one of Australia’s best-known historical figures.
He is also part of the nation’s mythology, repeatedly 
re-emerging through Australia’s art, literature and music.  
Ned Kelly’s famous last stand, in the small northern Victorian town of Glenrowan on 28 June 1880, brought to an end his bushranging crusade.
This is the most famous moment in the flamboyant history of bushranging. It has come to represent the 
anti-authoritarian and risk-taking bushranger that is now 
a part of Australian folklore.
Glenrowan is a tangible link with this important event and the vivid strand of Australia’s national identity that it represents.
It has been said that the formation of the Kelly Gang was the result of police harassment combined with the rural discontent caused by inequity of land tenure between the poor selectors and rich squatters in the north-east of Victoria and in parts of southern New South Wales.
Whatever the reasons for its creation, the Kelly Gang was involved in bushranger activities, from robbing banks and holding people hostage to exchanging gunfire with police. The point of no return came in 1878 when Ned Kelly shot and killed three police officers who had tried to capture the Kelly Gang at Stringybark Creek, near Mansfield in Victoria. Their names were Constables Lonigan and Scanlon, and Sergeant Kennedy. For almost two years after the shootings, police, in ever-increasing numbers, tried to capture the infamous band.
Using the evocative language of protest, Ned Kelly tried to tap into the underlying resentment of the day. For many, he was the champion of the underdog—the son of a poor and persecuted Irish family in search of equality for all. To others, Kelly was a murderer and a common criminal. 
Today, the spirit of the man and the power of his defiant faceless armour, stirs the creativity of some of Australia’s best-known artists, writers and musicians. 
Sidney Nolan created his well-known Kelly series of paintings and Peter Carey won a Booker Prize for his novel, The True History of the Kelly Gang. Multiple Kelly feature films have been made including what is believed to be the world’s first feature film—The Story of the Kelly Gang, 1906—and a myriad of ‘Ned Kellys’ paraded in the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Glenrowan is the place most identifiable with the Kelly story and with that of bushrangers in general. The eight-hectare Glenrowan Heritage Precinct includes the key sites such as the original railway platform, the siege site itself, Anne Jones’s Glenrowan Inn (which police burnt to the ground) and the site of Ned Kelly’s fall and capture (the ‘Kelly Log’ site). The site allows visitors access to the actual location where the pivotal siege events unfolded.
National Heritage List: 5 July 2005

Sydney Opera House
New South Wales

For most observers, the white billowing silhouette of the Opera House, harbour-side location and proximity to the arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge create an unforgettable panorama.
Today, more than 35 years since it opened to the public, the Sydney Opera House is the nation’s most recognisable building and an icon synonymous with Australia’s independent cultural spirit.
The story of the construction of this remarkable and improbable building is one of controversy. Escalating costs and complex engineering problems made it a source of constant public debate, which only subsided when the beauty and technical achievement of the finished product placed the Opera House on the world’s architectural stage. Today, it is one of the busiest performing arts centres in the world, each year staging more than 2000 events and drawing around two million patrons.
In 1956, the New South Wales Government ran an international competition for the design of a ‘National Opera House’. Out of 233 entries from 33 countries the judges chose the drawings of 38-year-old Danish architect, Jørn Utzon, stating: 
“we are convinced that they present a concept of an opera house which is capable of being one of the great buildings of the world”.
The engineering company Ove Arup and Partners accepted the challenge to construct the building. It took 16 years to build and in the process pushed existing architectural and engineering knowledge to its limits. Throughout these years, delays and mounting costs dogged development. A creative solution was found to fund the venture, and the revenue-raising Opera House Lottery was established, collecting some $101 million from 496 lotteries. This was almost the cost of the Opera House.
The technical challenge of how to construct the sculptural sail-like roof shells took Utzon and Ove Arup and Partners more than four years to solve. When they found the solution, they then had to revisit some of their earlier construction work and rebuild and strengthen the foundations so that they could support the revised structures. Issues such as this fuelled controversy and took their toll on the troubled relationship between the New South Wales Government and the architect. In 1966, this relationship shattered beyond repair and Jørn Utzon resigned. Architects Todd, Hall and Littlemore completed the job over the next seven years.
The Opera House was built as a performance venue and includes a concert hall, opera and drama theatres, a playhouse and studio. In the years since its opening, by Queen Elizabeth II on 20 October 1973, it has provided a fitting showcase for some of the world’s most renowned artists.
The Sydney Opera House is the extraordinary expression of an architect’s vision, a government’s will, engineering excellence and public hopes. Above all, it is now a vibrant part of the Australian psyche, a reflection of what this nation is and what it aspires to be.
National Heritage List: 12 July 2005
World Heritage List: 2007

Fremantle Prison
Western Australia
A striking landmark on a small hill, Fremantle Prison is a physical reminder of the contribution made by Australia’s convicts to building this nation. 
It provides insights into a difficult and formative part of Australia’s history. Fremantle Prison contains remarkably preserved remnants of the earliest phase of European settlement of Western Australia. 
In the mid-1800s gold fever struck eastern Australia, but in the west a shrinking population of settlers struggled to make a living from the inhospitable land. With few hands available to build and expand the colony south of the Swan River the solution was sought in convict labour. On 1 June 1850, after months sailing across the world, a ship arrived at Fremantle, Western Australia, carrying 75 convicts. Banished from their homeland and sent to a harsh foreign land, these convicts played an important role in building the nation. They could supply the physical labour needed to construct roads, bridges, houses, lighthouses, jetties, footpaths as well as public buildings, like the Perth Town Hall.
When Fremantle Prison was built between 1851 and 1859, its structure reflected the less physically violent approach to convict management. It was built along the same lines as Pentonville Prison in London, one of England’s first Model Prisons to focus on reform.
The Model Prison operated on the theory that complete isolation was an effective form of rehabilitation. Prisoners were not allowed contact with each other and were held in cells in complete isolation and absolute silence. This type of prison was also opened at Port Arthur in 1852.
Fremantle Prison contains fascinating structures which reflect changes that have taken place over the 133 year period it operated as a prison. The Main Cell Block is Australia’s largest and longest, measuring some 145 metres long and four storeys high. It could accommodate up to 1000 men. The prison also contains a chapel, a two-storey limestone gatehouse, workshops, cottages, guardhouses, a hospital, an underground reservoir, a kilometre-long tunnel network, limestone perimeter walls, a refractory block and gallows.
Some of these structures have been embellished by their human occupants through graffiti, murals, signs and notices, all of which create a vivid and layered insight into prison life. Over time, Fremantle Prison has been a public works prison, a convict distribution depot, the state’s only place of execution, an internment camp for ‘aliens’ and prisoners of war during two World Wars, and, after being decommissioned in 1991, a tourist and educational venue. 
As many of the prison’s structures have been preserved from convict times, their integrity and authenticity provide a rich resource for researchers, archaeologists and the education sector. Many appreciate the prison as a place to connect with colonial roots, or to search for family links to this now-recognised part of Australia’s history.
National Heritage List: 1 August 2005

First Government House Site
New South Wales
Australia’s First Government House was the earliest major building to be constructed on the Australian mainland.
Started only months after the 11 ships of the First Fleet sailed through Sydney Heads in early 1788, the First Government House Site sat on the most prominent site on Sydney Cove just back from Circular Quay and on what is now the corner of Bridge and Phillip Streets in Sydney.
Merchants, soldiers, Aboriginals, foreign visitors, explorers, settlers and statesmen all passed through its doors, making it the hub of a new antipodean world. 
It remained one of the centres of power through the terms of nine governors until its state of disrepair, and the growing pressures of expanding waterfront activities, forced its demolition in 1845. Some 217 years after its foundations were laid, the remains of some of its structures have been preserved and illustrated on site at the Museum of Sydney in Sydney’s central business district. 
Using convict labour the construction of the new home and headquarters of Australia’s first Governor, Arthur Phillip, took just over a year. Built with 5000 bricks imported from England, the site also used bricks made locally from clay, imported lime and shellfish from Darling Harbour.
The First Government House was a centre of power and decision making for the developing New South Wales colony, which, at that time, covered two-thirds of the continent. It witnessed major milestones such as printing of the colony’s first Government Orders in 1795 and Australia’s first newspaper, the Sydney Gazette, in 1803; Governor Bligh’s arrest during the Rum Rebellion in 1808; and the first Legislative Council meeting in 1824.
Once the first Government House was demolished, the site was used variously as a carter’s yard, a fruit shop, a confectioner’s and tobacconist’s shop, government offices, accommodation for nurses during the Second World War and a car park. At one stage it was to become the site of the city’s town hall and later was mooted as the location for a multi-storey office block. 
In 1983, before commencing construction on the multi-storey building, remains of the First Government House were discovered in an archaeological excavation, sparking debate on the future of the site. Following public protest to save the area, planning approval for the development was rejected. Soon after, an international architectural design competition was announced to create a development that would conserve and present the archaeological remains of the site while still enabling the construction of office buildings.
Following the discovery of the remains, further high-profile archaeological exploration—the largest urban excavation undertaken at the time in Australia—uncovered the vestiges of drains, privies, foundations, walls and cuttings. In addition, excavations also revealed artefacts including Australia’s first locally made bricks, window glass, roof tiling, china, bottles, broken tobacco pipes, printing remnants and dog bones.
Although mostly covered today, the archaeological remains of the building still have the potential to reveal much about the earliest efforts to build a nation.
National Heritage List: 19 August 2005

20th Century Architecture
Australian Capital Territory and Victoria 

Architecture has contributed to Australia’s cultural identity since colonial times. 
The nation’s fashions in architecture and engineering have been influenced by overseas trends since 1788, a pattern reflected in the 20th century in both private and government sectors.
At the international level, traditional architectural boundaries were challenged in the 20th century and new ways of doing things explored with enthusiasm. 
Twentieth century architecture, both in Australia and overseas, bears testament to this time of experimentation.
Architects, engineers and planners in the capital cities were among the first to challenge the norms in late 20th century Australia and to find and introduce innovative architectural ways of expressing community, corporate and business optimism. This transformation gained momentum in the capital cities, including the nation’s capital Canberra, as Australia emerged from a crushing Depression and two World Wars.
For Australia, 20th century architecture’s most celebrated technical and creative innovation is the Sydney Opera House, completed in 1973 following an international competition in 1956. Its unconventional and inspiring form pushed the bounds of contemporary engineering know-how. Today it is Australia’s most widely-recognised building, both nationally and internationally. Other outstanding examples of this period of architectural and engineering achievement include the following places.
Newman College
Walter Burley Griffin’s sculpted college 
Newman College, in the grounds of Melbourne University, is considered to be one of the best buildings ever designed by Chicago architect Walter Burley Griffin. Griffin, who once worked for the internationally renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright, was a notable exponent of Chicago’s Prairie architectural style. He came to Australia in 1914 after winning an international competition to design Australia’s new capital city, Canberra.
He went on to design whole suburbs, such as Castlecrag in Sydney, as well as individual buildings, before leaving Australia for India in 1935. Newman College, which was built between 1916 and 1918, is an outstanding example of Griffin’s distinctive sculptural style. Its strong geometric form, which includes a dining hall and residential wings, was built using an innovative mix of rough stone base with smooth masses of concrete above. Griffin enhanced the impact of his creation by extending his design through every aspect of the building—its fixtures, fittings and furniture. The building sits harmoniously in park-like grounds thanks to the landscape design of his wife, Marion Mahony.
Perhaps the most striking and innovative feature of Newman College is the domed refectory made from reinforced concrete. When built, it was one of the earliest and largest domes in Australia. This remarkable building has continued to be lived and worked in by staff and students since 1918.
ICI Building (former)/Orica House
Formerly Australia’s tallest building
Once Australia’s tallest building, the former ICI Building in East Melbourne, now Orica House, was  at the forefront of the high-rise boom in Australia’s cities in the second half of the 20th century. Its design followed the international trend for multi-storey buildings which was particularly evident in the United States. The move from low to high-rise office buildings changed the profile, shape and landscape of Australia’s major urban centres forever.
Built between 1955 and 1958 the ICI Building was one of 22 major new multi-storey office buildings which sprang up in Melbourne in the second half of the 1950s. Its 21 storeys broke through the previous legal limit of 11 to 12 storeys, resulting in Melbourne becoming the first Australian city to change its height limits. It was not until 1962 that the first tall building was completed in Sydney.
In earlier times most Australian office buildings occupied their entire blocks. However, the modern free-standing high-rise and its surrounding landscaped gardens and car park introduced the idea of creating a balance between a building’s height and public amenities.
Australian Academy of Science Building
Modernist dome—an architectural landmark
The low-slung copper dome of the Australian Academy of Science near the centre of Canberra created a milestone in the Australian construction industry when it was built in 1959. Its seemingly weightless shape provided a striking contrast to the heavy concrete buildings of the same period and has become a landmark in the national capital.
The dome’s innovative structure, designed by one of the most prominent Australian architects of the time, Sir Roy Grounds, reflects the bold modernism of the period. When constructed, it was large by world standards and larger than any dome in Australia. Its weight is anchored by the surrounding water-filled moat making it an extremely stable structure. The selection of materials and the design and finish of its interior contribute to the impact and importance of this award-winning building.
The building is believed to be the only true example in Australia of Geometric Structuralism—an architectural movement which used tension to maximise the function of the structure. When constructed, the dome made a confident statement about the post Second World War development of Australia’s scientific community. This community included such luminaries as the distinguished scientist, Sir Marcus Oliphant, veterinary scientist, Dr Ian Clunies Ross, and explorer, Sir Douglas Mawson.
Sidney Myer Music Bowl
A magnificent sound and architecture experiment
Almost floating above the ground as if weightless, the Sidney Myer Music Bowl is one of Melbourne’s best‑known and most visited landmarks. When it was built in the late 1950s this entertainment venue was a world first, an engineering experiment that stretched the bounds of what was thought possible. The technical and creative achievement of this construction lies in the structural system that suspends the large, wave-like roof above the stage.
Architect Barry Patten, a member of the leading Australian architectural firm, Yuncken Freeman Brothers, Griffiths and Simpson, is responsible for creating this excellent example of the late 20th century style. This style is characterised by its large-scale, free, sculptural curved spaces which float above the site. The design and structural achievement of the Sidney Myer Music Bowl was nearly 10 years ahead of similar work by German architect/engineer, Frei Otto, and his experiments in using lightweight tensile and membrane structures.
To make the soundshell both watertight and aerodynamically stable and flexible, new construction techniques were developed.
Aluminium-covered plywood panels were suspended between a framework of steel wire ropes. An enormous main cable was stretched between the two masts to support 27 cables before being buried deep in the ground on either side. It supported a 4055m2 acoustically accurate canopy. When built, it was one of a small number of structures in Australia to combine a tensile structural system with a free-form roof and was the most important of these in terms of scale, sophistication and structural expression.
The music bowl was named after its benefactor, Sidney Myer, a Russian immigrant who arrived in Victoria in 1899, he went on to establish one of Australia’s largest retail businesses and to become one of the nation’s most significant philanthropists. Prime Minister Robert Menzies opened the venue in February 1959. Since then, Melbourne’s first major purpose-built, live outdoor cultural venue has been drawing both artists and crowds of up to 200 000 patrons.
National Heritage List: 21 September 2005

Recherche Bay (North East Peninsula) Area
Tasmania
During the late 18th century, Britain and France were competing to chart and explore new worlds. Speculation in Europe was rampant about Terra Australis Incognita, ‘the unknown southern land’.
In 1642 Captain Abel Tasman sailed around and roughly charted the south-western and eastern coastline of the area he named Van Diemen’s Land and we now know as Tasmania. In 1644 Tasman was sent to establish the geographic relationship between northern Australia and Papua New Guinea. Although he missed the opening of the Torres Strait, Tasman was able to complete the first accurate charting of the coast of northern Australia from Cape York in the east to North West Cape in the west.
In 1770 James Cook changed the world’s understanding 
of Terra Australis Incognita with his exploration aboard the Endeavour, charting around 3200 kilometres of coastline. His voyage dramatically expanded the world’s scientific understanding of the continent’s unique flora and fauna and led to increased interest from Europe. Guided by Cook’s notes, French explorer, Comte de La Perouse, arrived in Botany Bay just days after the First Fleet, anchoring on 24 January 1788, and then sailed north with his two ships, disappearing without trace.
Three years later, an expedition led by Bruni d’Entrecasteaux left France under orders from Louis XVI to try to find La Perouse and also to complete charts of the southern land. The expedition set sail in two 350-ton frigates, the Recherche and the Esperance.
Arriving in April 1792, the landing in Van Diemen’s Land was the result of an accident. Following a violent storm, the French vessels mistook what was later named Recherche Bay for Adventure Bay, a safe harbour observed by Tasman, as a place to recuperate. They then undertook an extended but unsuccessful search for La Perouse.
They returned to Recherche Bay to the garden planted by Felix Lahaie in May 1792. It was the practice of European crews to plant gardens in destinations they visited to provide sustenance for other maritime adventurers. However, the French were also under instructions to establish European plants for the benefit of Indigenous people—a gift from the French people to the natives of the new land.
Their observations about contact with the Indigenous inhabitants—particularly in the journals of botanist Jacques Julien de Labillardiere later published in France—today remain the best accounts of Tasmanian Aboriginal society prior to European settlement.
The physicist Elisabeth Paul Edouard de Rossel also carried out pioneering work of worldwide importance in the field of geomagnetism, proving geomagnetism varied with latitude.
In 1804–06 Labillardiere also identified about 100 new plant species including the blue gum, Eucalyptus globulus, now Tasmania’s floral emblem. The publication of the botanical material collected by the d’Entrecasteaux expedition represented the first general publication extensively covering Australia’s flora to this extent. Much of Labillardiere’s Australian material came from Recherche Bay. 
National Heritage List: 7 October 2005

Richmond Bridge
Tasmania  
The sandstone arches of the Richmond Bridge have straddled Tasmania’s Coal River since 1825. Built by convict labour, Richmond Bridge is Australia’s earliest large-stone bridge and represents an important element of our convict past.
Richmond Bridge has outstanding heritage value to the nation for its rarity as Australia’s oldest large-stone arch bridge and its aesthetic qualities that have inspired the work of major Australian artists.
The Richmond area was first explored by Europeans in 1803. European settlement and cultivation of Richmond quickly developed. All available land in the district was made over to wheat cultivation and from about 1820 the region became known as the granary of the Australian colonies. Increased road traffic made a bridge over the Coal River a necessity. For some years carts and cattle had crossed the river at a ford south of where the bridge now stands. However, traffic was often delayed in winter and spring when the Coal River flooded. The need for a bridge was recognised by the Royal Commissioner, John Thomas Bigge, when he visited Richmond in 1820 as part of his commission of inquiry on agriculture and trade. The site was selected and construction of a stone bridge commenced in December 1823.
Richmond Bridge was probably designed by Major Thomas Bell, who had six years experience as Acting Colonial Engineer. Bell also supervised construction of the bridge, which was undertaken using convict labour to cut, transport and place the local sandstone. The bridge was completed in either late 1824 or early 1825 (various dates are given). The establishment of Richmond is closely associated with the bridge. Within two months of the commencement of work on the bridge the township of Richmond was proclaimed.
Richmond Bridge allowed heavy traffic to proceed without delay between Hobart and the east coast and Tasman Peninsula. The bridge served to consolidate Richmond as a focus for commercial and institutional development. By 1835 Richmond had the largest district population in Van Diemen’s Land and was the third largest town in the colony. The opening of the Sorell causeway in 1872 provided a more direct link between Hobart and the Tasman Peninsula. Land traffic thereafter largely bypassed Richmond. The population of Richmond remained virtually unchanged at approximately 1600 people between 1862 and 1957. One of the main attractions of the town became Richmond Bridge, which is still used for road traffic today but remains little changed from the 1820s. The aesthetic design and setting of the bridge became a major tourist drawcard in the 20th century. By the 1920s Richmond Bridge was featured on postcards and this was followed by artistic and photographic depictions, as well as commemoration in exhibition and books.
From the 1960s Richmond Bridge began to be more widely recognised for its architectural and historical significance. The bridge featured on Australian stamps issued in 1976 and 2004. Richmond and its bridge today attract more than 200 000 visitors annually.
National Heritage List: 25 November 2005

HMVS Cerberus
Victoria 
Named after the three-headed mythological guard dog, Australia’s HMVS Cerberus was purpose-built for the Victorian Colonial Navy in 1868.
The prototype of modern steam-powered battleships, her unique design laid the foundations for all surface, 
gun-armed warships for a century, until the advent of guided missiles in the late 1960s. The heavy iron superstructure and lighter iron hull were a radical departure from the wooden warships that had previously dominated world navies.
In the 1860s, the Victorian Government was in the market for a powerful warship. Britain and Russia prepared to face each other in battle again as the threat of a second Crimean War became very real. The Australian colonies, half a world away from Britain, faced the possibility of hostile attack by a Russian flotilla.
HMVS Cerberus was the flagship of the Victorian Colonial Navy, protecting Melbourne and Victoria’s rich gold resources from foreign attack. Upon Federation in 1901 she was transferred to the Commonwealth naval forces and then became an inaugural unit of the Royal Australian Navy in 1911.
By 1924 she was declared surplus to the Navy and was sold to a salvage company. Stripped of any fixtures of value, the remaining hulk was purchased for 150 pounds by the then Sandringham Council. She was eventually scuttled as a breakwater in 1926 at her current location, a few hundred metres off the beach at Half Moon Bay, Black Rock, Victoria.
HMVS Cerberus was the first iron-hulled British warship to be designed without masts and to be powered purely by steam. She was distinguished by a low freeboard, breastwork armour, and a central superstructure with turrets above deck both fore and aft.
Her main armament consisted of four 10-inch muzzle loading guns mounted in two turrets. Cerberus’ guns were capable of firing a round every 1.5 minutes; exceptionally fast for the standards of the day. She also had ballast tanks that could be filled to sink the hull and lower her freeboard to further reduce her profile in battle.
Throughout her 53 years of service, HMVS Cerberus was never required to fire a shell at an enemy. In her prime Cerberus was an outstanding example of technical achievement and ingenuity, she was an experimental and transitional model that was not suited to ocean-going and was soon superseded.
Today, this unique relic of our naval heritage continues to be hailed for her place in the evolution of the battleship.
National Heritage List: 14 December 2005

Melbourne Cricket Ground
Victoria
Few people ever forget their first visit to the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the MCG, or ‘the G’, as it is also known. 
As one steps into the vast stadium the magnetic atmosphere, left by the thrills and excitement of thousands of games and events, is almost tangible.
Widely recognised as the home of Australian sport, the MCG has contributed to Australia’s cultural history through strong social links for the sporting community: its key role in the development and history of Australia’s two most popular spectator sports, cricket and Australian Rules Football, and its special association with sportsmen and sportswomen who have excelled there.
It is one of Australia’s most significant sporting stadiums, dating back to September 1853, when Lieutenant-Governor La Trobe granted the ‘Police Paddock’ to the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC). 
The association of the MCG with the MCC, the Melbourne Football Club (MFC), cricket and Australian Rules Football, spans more than 150 years. 
The MCC hosted the inaugural Victoria versus New South Wales first-class cricket match at the MCG in March 1856. The first appearance by an English cricket team on Australian soil occurred when HH Stephenson’s XI played Victoria at the MCG on New Year’s Day 1862. Tom Wills, Secretary of the MCC and Victorian Cricket Captain, led an Aboriginal team against an MCC team at the MCG before 11 000 spectators in December 1866. 
The first test match between Australia and England began at the MCG on 15 March 1877, with Australian batsman Charles Bannerman scoring the first century in test cricket in Australia’s first innings. 
Sir Donald Bradman, Australia’s greatest cricketer and generally regarded as the best player of all time, had a remarkable record at the MCG. In the 11 tests he played there, he scored nine test centuries in 17 innings, averaging 128 runs-per-innings. He made 19 centuries in domestic first-class cricket at the MCG.
The MCG witnessed the birth of Australian Rules Football when cricketer, Tom Wills, conceived the game with the aim of keeping cricketers fit over winter. In the mid-19th century Wills, who at 24 years old was both Victorian Cricket and Melbourne Football Club Captain, was the most influential sportsman of his time.
The MCG is the home ground of the MFC. Ron Barassi played for this club from 1953 to 1964, and is widely regarded as the club’s greatest player. He was inducted into the Australian Football League Hall of Fame in 1996 and elevated to the status of ‘Legend’ of the game.
The MCG was the centrepiece of the 1956 Olympic Games, the first Olympics held in the southern hemisphere. The Melbourne Olympics were held during a period of extreme international tension, yet became known as the ‘Friendly Games’ and left an enduring legacy for Melbourne, Australia and the Olympic movement. At the Melbourne Olympics, thousands of spectators cheered legendary sprinter Betty Cuthbert as she won three gold medals at the MCG.
The MCG embodies Australia’s love of sport and its inclusion in the National Heritage List ensures its unique values are protected for the future.
National Heritage List: 26 December 2005

Tree of Knowledge
Queensland
A 10-metre, 150-year-old Ghost Gum, opposite the hotel in the centre of Barcaldine in Central West Queensland, symbolised an important time in Australia’s political development as the meeting place for shearers during their unsuccessful strike of 1891.
The shearers’ strike, in conjunction with the maritime strike of 1890, played a crucial role in the historical connection between unions and what eventually became the Australian Labor Party.
The linking of May Day with Labour Day in Queensland began in Barcaldine on 1 May 1891, when striking shearers and bush workers marched through the streets.
The strike was broken five days later with the backing of the New South Wales and Queensland Governments when, on 6 May 1891, the colonial administration ordered the arrest of the shearer’s leaders on a number of charges including sedition and conspiracy.
Thirteen ringleaders were found guilty of conspiracy on 20 May 1891 at Rockhampton, and sentenced to three years’ hard labour in the gaol on Saint Helena Island in Moreton Bay.
The strike committee issued its final manifesto on 20 June 1891, calling for unionists to register on the electoral rolls.
As a result of losing the strike, the unions, and others in Queensland, formed ‘Labour Electoral Leagues’, which later became the ‘Labour Party’ and eventually the ‘Australian Labor Party’.
The formation of the Labour Electoral Leagues led to the election in 1892, in Queensland, of a shearer, TJ Ryan, who became the first ‘Labour’ representative in any government, anywhere in the world.
The Tree of Knowledge came to represent the culmination in Queensland of social tensions, which, by the 1880s, were widespread in the pastoral districts of the eastern colonies. The attitudes of squatters and property owners, the introduction of mechanical shearing and the influence of labour unions all played a part. 
In April 2006 the Tree of Knowledge was poisoned and did not recover. A new memorial incorporating the remnants of the old tree was opened in May 2009. While the precise role of the tree during the shearers’ strike may be debated, the site will always remain an important place of National Heritage.
National Heritage List: 26 January 2006

South Australia’s Old and New Parliament Houses
South Australia
Australia’s democratic system is unique in many ways. When we vote at ballot stations in state, territory and federal elections many of the processes we take for granted today, such as every citizen 18 years and over having the right to vote, secret ballots and one person/one vote, were unknown in Australia more than 150 years ago.
These ideas were political reforms that were first introduced in South Australia’s Old and New Parliament Houses, making these buildings important to Australia’s democratic history.
When Australia’s colonies were first established, each was administered by a colonial governor, appointed by the British Government. Each colony gradually achieved self-government, however, voting rights were often determined by a person’s wealth and property status.
South Australia’s Parliament was a world leader in establishing democracy during the 19th century. In 1856 it was the first Australian colony to grant full adult male suffrage, that is, the right to vote to males over the age of 21. This decision also gave Aboriginal men the right to vote. 
Another significant Australian and international first occurred in 1894, when women, including Aboriginal women, were given the right to vote and from 1886 were able to stand for Parliament in South Australia. 
These rights were later introduced in other parts of Australia and from the beginning of Federation in 1901. Many of world’s largest democracies lagged behind Australia. Women in the United Kingdom did not receive the right to vote until 1918 (for women over the age of 30), the United States of America in 1919 and France in 1945.
Despite winning the right to sit in Parliament in 1894, it was 1918 before a woman stood for Parliament in South Australia, and a further 41 years before women were first elected to the South Australian Parliament. In 1959 Jessie Cooper (House of Assembly) and Joyce Steele (Legislative Council) were the first women to be elected to South Australia’s Parliament. The secret ballot is a voting method that today is used around the world and is one of the most important democratic freedoms. Election choices are confidential to protect voters from intimidation or bribery. In many parts of the world it is known as the ‘Australian ballot’, as the system was first used to vote in South Australia’s 1856 Parliamentary election. The parliamentary buildings themselves have gone through many changes. Parliament House as it stands today was eventually completed to commemorate the centenary of the State in 1936.
New Parliament House is located on one of Adelaide’s major intersections (North Terrace and King William Street) and is a major civic landmark with a very strong presence. 
National Heritage List: 26 January 2006

Dirk Hartog Landing Site 1616 – 
Cape Inscription Area
Western Australia
Dutch East India Company Captain Dirk Hartog, aboard his ship Eendracht, accidentally discovered the west coast of the mythical Great South Land or Terra Australis Incognita. 
Hartog was following the southern route to the port of Batavia (Jakarta) in the East Indies (Indonesia). 
On 25 October 1616 Hartog landed at what is now known as Cape Inscription, on the north-western tip of Dirk Hartog Island in Shark Bay. 
To mark the first landing by Europeans on the west coast of ‘New Holland’, Hartog left a pewter plate inscribed with a record of his visit in a rock cleft. Now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the plate is the oldest physical record of a European landing in Australia.
Hartog’s chart of the northern part of the Western Australia coastline appeared on world maps for the first time, prompting a series of landings and surveys by many notable Dutch, French and English explorers during the next 250 years.
Sent by the Dutch East India Company to chart the south-west coast of New Holland, Willem de Vlamingh landed at Dirk Hartog Island on 4 February 1697. Vlamingh replaced Hartog’s pewter plate with his own inscribed plate.
Vlamingh’s plate was in turn found in 1801 by Baron Emanuel Hamelin, a member of Nicholas Baudin’s French expedition, who added his own inscription on a piece of lead sheeting. 
One of Hamelin’s junior officers, Louis de Freycinet, returned to Cape Inscription in 1818 and removed Vlamingh’s plate (which was returned to Australia by the French Government in 1947).
British navigator, Philip Parker King, son of a former New South Wales Governor, also left a record of his visit to Cape Inscription in 1822 while attempting to complete Matthew Flinders’ 1801 charts of the Australian coastline.
In 1858 Captain Henry Mangles Denham on HMS Herald also visited Cape Inscription to complete the first naval hydrographic charts of the Western Australian coastline.
These landings had a profound effect on cartography, changed the 18th century European world view and expanded knowledge about the great southern continent.
In addition to Cape Inscription, two other sites on Dirk Hartog Island—Dampier Landing and Turtle Bay—are important in Australian exploration.
In 1699 British navigator and naturalist, William Dampier, landed on the north-western side of the island and named Shark Bay. Dampier made the first scientific collection of Australian plants, marking the beginnings of scientific interest in Australian botany and their taxonomic classifications.
In 1772 French navigator, Francois de Saint-Allouarn, landed at Turtle Bay. He buried two bottles, one containing a parchment claiming the west coast of New Holland for France. Each bottle was sealed with a silver French coin under the lead cap. One of the bottles, together with its coin and lead cap but without a parchment, was recovered in 1998.
Dirk Hartog Island was included in the Shark Bay World Heritage Area in 1991 in recognition of its outstanding natural universal values.
National Heritage List: 6 April 2006
Included in the Shark Bay World Heritage Area: 1991

Batavia Shipwreck Site and Survivor 
Camps Area 1629 – Houtman Abrolhos
Western Australia
The story of how the Dutch merchant vessel Batavia became wrecked off the coast of Western Australia in June 1629 and the bloody aftermath is a fascinating tale of maritime treachery, murder and ultimately, heroism.
The Dutch East India Company was the dominant trading company in the East Indies (Indonesia) during the 17th and 18th centuries, with its headquarters in Batavia (Jakarta). Wrecks like Batavia’s demonstrated the necessity for more accurate charts and resulted in the commissioning of Vlamingh’s 1696 voyage.
In October 1628 a Company ship, the Batavia, set out from Holland on her maiden journey to Batavia carrying vast wealth in silver coins and jewels. Undermerchant Jeronimus Cornelisz conspired with other officers to mutiny and seized the ship for its cargo. On 4 June 1629 the Batavia struck a coral reef in the Houtman Abrolhos Islands, 40 kilometres off the Western Australian coast, and sank.
Survivors managed to reach a nearby barren island, later known as ‘Batavia’s Graveyard’. The ship’s Commander, Francisco Pelsaert, set sail in a long boat to fetch help from Batavia, more than 900 nautical miles away along a largely unknown coast. Batavia’s skipper, Jacobsz, and 45 others accompanied Pelsaert. 
In their absence, Cornelisz and his band devised a new mutiny plan. Those who might oppose the mutineers were sent to surrounding islands to seek water. In a reign of terror Cornelisz’s men began murdering those remaining, beginning with the sick and the injured. As numbers dwindled and bloodlust took hold, wholesale slaughter took place with little secrecy. Survivors sent to the other islands were hunted down and killed if they had not already succumbed to thirst or hunger.
Mercenary soldier, Wiebbe Hayes, unexpectedly found water on Wallabi Island. He learned of the murders when one man managed to escape Cornelisz and swam across to join Hayes. After fighting off two attacks by the mutineers, Hayes and his men raised the alarm when Pelsaert returned from Batavia in a rescue ship.

The mutineers were tried on the island for the murder of over 120 people. Interrogated and tortured for 10 days until they signed confessions, seven were hanged. Two of the youngest mutineers, Wouter Loos and Jan Pelgrom de Bye, were sentenced to be marooned on the Australian mainland, where they became the first known European residents of Australia. No further contact with them was ever recorded. 
In June 1963, the Batavia was discovered relatively intact when fisherman Dave Johnson showed two Geraldton divers, Max and Graeme Cramer, cannons and anchors in the waters off Morning Reef.
Two ruined huts found on West Wallabi Island, thought to have been built by Hayes and his soldiers, are believed to be the oldest structures built by Europeans on the Australian continent. 
Sections of the Batavia’s hull have been reconstructed and are displayed at the Western Australian Maritime Museum. Other artefacts are on display at the Western Australian Museum in Geraldton.
National Heritage List: 6 April 2006

Hermannsburg Historic Precinct
Northern Territory
The Hermannsburg Historic Precinct, dating from 1877, is the last surviving mission developed by the Hermannsburg Missionary Society. It shows the influence of the German Lutherans on Aboriginal people in central Australia.
Hermannsburg Mission was managed by the Lutherans continuously from 1877 to 1982. The structures and landscaping of the Hermannsburg Historic Precinct reflect the changing phases of missionary and government policy towards Aboriginal people over this period.
The mission functioned as a refuge for Aboriginal people during the violent frontier conflict that was a feature of early pastoral settlement in central Australia. The Lutheran missionaries helped mediate conflict between pastoralists, the police and Aboriginal people, and spoke out publicly about the violence, sparking heated national debate.
The influence of German pastors and tradesmen of German origin in South Australia is clearly visible in the planning and layout of the mission, and in the design and construction of the masonry buildings. Residential buildings incorporate features of traditional German farmhouses, also seen in German Lutheran settlements in South Australia. These features illustrate common themes of Aboriginal mission life in the late 1800s and early 1900s such as the distribution of rations, communal meals for Aboriginal people, the separation of Aboriginal children from their parents, and a strong emphasis by the missionaries, in particular the Lutherans, on church, schooling, work and self-sufficiency.
Hermannsburg Historic Precinct has a special association with Albert Namatjira and his distinctive Aboriginal school of central Australian landscape painting. Namatjira grew up at Hermannsburg and the mission was pivotal to his development as an artist. He was the first Aboriginal artist to be commercially exhibited nationally and internationally. Namatjira’s work became widely acclaimed and a national symbol for Aboriginal achievement.
Lutheran missionaries based at Hermannsburg Mission made a singular contribution to the record of Aboriginal traditions through their work in this region. This was principally through the early research of Pastor Carl Strehlow and his son, Professor T.G.H. Strehlow. T.G.H. Strehlow spent his early years with Aboriginal people at Hermannsburg and became the leading anthropologist of central Australia in the 20th century.
National Heritage List: 13 April 2006

Australian War Memorial and Anzac Parade
Australian Capital Territory
The Australian War Memorial and Anzac Parade are at the heart of the nation’s tribute to the courage and sacrifice of the men and women who have helped defend our nation.
They are important national landmarks that help us understand and commemorate the contribution and loss of Australians during times of armed conflict. 
The sandstone Australian War Memorial, with its copper-sheathed dome is the site of national commemorative services and events such as the ANZAC Day Services.  
CEW Bean, Australia’s official First World War correspondent, began thinking about commemorating the sacrifice of Australians while he was serving at Gallipoli in 1915. Bean’s idea was to set aside a place in Australia where families and friends could grieve for those buried in places far away and difficult to visit.
The Australian Government agreed to Bean’s proposal and in 1917, while the war continued to rage in Europe, announced that it would create a national war memorial. Its foundation stone was laid on ANZAC Day 1919, but work on the building was delayed by the Depression and the Second World War and it was not opened until 11 November 1941.
The Australian War Memorial was originally planned to commemorate only the First World War, yet it soon became apparent that the new war raging overseas was comparable in scale and effect. In 1941 the Australian Government extended the Memorial’s charter to include the Second World War; and in 1952 it was extended again to include all armed conflicts that Australia was involved in—the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Gulf Wars and peacekeeping operations.
Close to one million people visit the Australian War Memorial each year to pay their respects and gain an understanding of Australia’s experience in armed conflicts. Visitors to the building first see two medieval stone lions that were presented by the city of Ypres (one of the First World War battlefields) to the Australian War Memorial in 1936. 
The collection tells the story of a nation’s experience in world wars, regional conflicts and international peacekeeping. It contains unique objects such as a Lancaster bomber and a large collection of Victoria Crosses. 
The Sculpture Garden includes works depicting Simpson and his donkey, Australian servicemen, and Sir Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop, in commemoration of the medical staff who came to the aid of Australian prisoners of war in South-East Asia in the Second World War.
Anzac Parade pays tribute to Australians who have died in war.  The Parade was officially opened on 25 April 1965 to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of the ANZAC landing in Gallipoli and various memorials have been added over time.  
The memorials along each side of the Parade include: Australian Hellenic Memorial, Australian Army National Memorial, Australian National Korean War Memorial, Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial, Desert Mounted Corps Memorial, New Zealand Memorial, Rats of Tobruk Memorial, Royal Australian Air Force Memorial, Australian Service Nurses National Memorial, Royal Australian Navy Memorial and the Kemal Ataturk Memorial.
National Heritage List: 25 April 2006

North Head, Sydney
New South Wales
Since the time of European settlement in Australia, the towering sandstone cliffs of North Head have witnessed the arrival of a variety of ships sailing into Sydney Harbour.
North Head has long been recognised as the entrance to one of the world’s most picturesque harbours, Port Jackson, and has been portrayed by artists such as Augustus Earle from as early as 1825.
In particular, the Manly headland marks the site where ships carrying passengers with infectious diseases were isolated; an important means of defence for an island-nation. North Head was the first site in Australia to be used for quarantine purposes when the Bussorah Merchant was detained in Spring Cove in 1828. Some passengers were found to have both smallpox and whooping cough and were kept onboard the ship while the healthier voyagers were housed in tents on shore.
Soon after, in 1832, the whole area of North Head was set aside for a permanent quarantine station by order of the Governor of New South Wales. The move was in response to the cholera epidemic in Europe at the time, as authorities feared the disease gaining a foothold in the Australian colonies. 
For almost 150 years North Head Quarantine Station helped protect Australia’s island nation from disease. Returning soldiers during both World Wars, prisoners of war, evacuees from Cyclone Tracy in 1974 and refugees from Vietnam in 1975 all passed through the station.
From its beginning until 1977 when the facility was closed, a total of 580 ships were detained and about 13 000 passengers, including generations of convicts, war veterans and free immigrants were quarantined for periods of up to 40 days. 
Like the Point Nepean Quarantine Station, the facility at North Head is situated in a strategically isolated location. The major groups of buildings, although of a similar age as surviving complexes in other states, are rare in terms of their range and relative integrity. For instance, the Superintendent’s Residence at North Head, built in 1854, appears to be the earliest surviving, purpose-built, quarantine-related structure in Australia.
The layout of the station, including its buildings, roads, fences and cemeteries, was designed to separate the quarantined passengers on the grounds of health, as well as social and cultural background. For example, the first, second and third class passengers were separated into barracks-style accommodation in different areas.
Separate areas were also developed for Asians and in this respect North Head is an expression of the gradual implementation of the White Australia Policy during the 1880s.
The station’s facilities show how the area developed according to scientific responses to disease outbreaks. The smallpox epidemic of 1881, for example, resulted in new facilities such as a hospital, and stricter zoning by fences. The Quarantine Station was added to the Sydney Harbour National Park in 1984. 
National Heritage List: 12 May 2006

Point Nepean Defence Sites and 
Quarantine Station Area
Victoria 
Situated at the tip of the Mornington Peninsula at the entrance to Port Phillip Bay, Point Nepean is the site of two historic 19th century landmarks that enabled the defence of the Colony of Victoria against disease and foreign attack.
Within a year of the discovery of gold in 1851, nearly 100 000 people had arrived in Melbourne by sea. 
Due to the crowded conditions on board, ships were breeding grounds for disease. Cholera, smallpox, typhoid, influenza and measles occurred in epidemics in the 1800s and caused many deaths.
A number of ships had significant outbreaks of disease on the voyage to the colony. A notorious example, the Ticonderoga, carrying scarlet fever and typhoid, lost 100 people by the time it anchored off Portsea.
To control and prevent the spread of disease Point Nepean was opened in 1852 as a maritime quarantine reserve. Ships carrying passengers with infectious diseases were required to unload all cases and passengers at risk of contracting disease. Passenger luggage was taken ashore to be fumigated with formaldehyde gas and passengers were required to take baths using antiseptic soap. 
The quarantine station contains the oldest barracks-style accommodation built for quarantine purposes in Australia. It pre-dates the oldest intact quarantine-related structures at North Head, Sydney, by 16 years. 
The isolation hospital and ward constructed from 1916 to 1920 and the emergency influenza huts illustrate the bathing and disinfecting standards set by the Commonwealth during the First World War. Many soldiers returning home from overseas duty were required to be quarantined in these buildings after falling victim to the Spanish influenza pandemic. 
During the 19th century the colonies of Australia were concerned about their external security. There were few resources for the protection of individual colonies once the British Imperial troops left in 1870, leaving defence in the hands of the colonial governments.
Fortifications on Point Nepean were built from the late 1870s and included Fort Nepean, Eagles Nest, Fort Pearce and Pearce Barracks. Their purpose was to ensure that any attacking ships attempting to enter the bay would be under fire from a series of guns from the time they passed through the South and West Channels.
Fort Nepean was known in the 1880s as Victoria’s ‘Gibraltar’ and in 1890 it was reported that Melbourne was the best-defended commercial city of the British Empire.
The value of these defences was demonstrated on the declaration of the First World War when the German steamer, Pfalz, attempted to depart Port Phillip Bay. It was forced to turn back after being fired upon by the batteries at Fort Nepean. It was the first shot fired by Australian forces in the conflict.
The Point Nepean Quarantine Station was officially closed in 1980. 
Today the Quarantine Station and fortifications at Point Nepean are regarded as unique examples of the crucial role coastal quarantine and defence played in protecting the Australian colonies of the British Empire.
National Heritage List: 16 June 2006

Old Parliament House and Curtilage
Australian Capital Territory
It is steeped in history, significance and drama—an iconic Australian landmark and the seat of political power for more than six decades.
Old Parliament House is the symbol of the nation’s political heritage, where the bedrock traditions of Australian democracy were formalised by the country’s political founders.
Within its walls the debates that shaped our nation took place: debates on reforms such as constitutional change, welfare and Aboriginal rights. 
Australia was governed from this landmark place through conflict and enormous social change. Its story began with the opening as the provisional Parliament House in Canberra, on 9 May 1927, by the Duke and Duchess of York.
Old Parliament House sits in the cultural landscape known as the Parliamentary Triangle, reflecting the design for Canberra by Walter Burley Griffin in which Kurrajong Hill (now Capital Hill) was the focal point. 
The central positioning of Old Parliament House symbolises the primacy of the parliament over the executive.  Its architectural symmetry and simple style—known as ‘Inter War Stripped Classical’—lends the building a modest but dignified presence. 
The King’s Hall, Senate and House of Representatives chambers reflect the austerity of the time. The interior has formal details such as decorative skylights, parquet flooring, high ceilings, raked galleries and timber wall panelling. Yet the simple spaces and restrained aesthetics belie the buildings’ many turbulent and momentous times—all rich debate over the nation’s future. 
One of the defining events in Australian political history took place on the front steps with the address by former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam after his dismissal by the Governor-General Sir John Kerr on 11 November 1975. 
Old Parliament House was the site of seven changes of government; where national legislation for the advancement of social processes was passed; and where the 1967 referendum to remove discriminatory measures against Australia’s Indigenous population was developed. The entrance portico and nearby lawns of Parkes Place have been the setting for countless gatherings, protests, celebrations and demonstrations, including the Aboriginal Tent Embassy established in January 1972. 
It is the place where Sir Robert Menzies served his record term as Prime Minister and where Prime Ministers John Curtin and Ben Chifley lay in state. As the number of politicians, their staff and media increased so too did demand for space.  Alterations and additions helped to improve the physical functioning of parliament but by 1988 the provisional Parliament House was vacated for the new House. 
Pressure from various bodies persuaded the government to restore and return it to the public realm.  It was subsequently reopened by former Prime Ministers, John Gorton and Gough Whitlam, on 15 December 1992. On 9 May 2009 the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House was opened.  
It remains a proud symbol of the evolution of our governance visually linked to its modern successor, Parliament House. In this way, the past and the present stand together symbolising the depth of our democracy and how far Australia has come. 
National Heritage List: 20 June 2006

Glass House Mountains National Landscape
Queensland
Rising from the low-lying Sunshine Coast, the domes, cones and spires of the Glass House Mountains fascinate geologists and artists alike.
Often described as awesome and picturesque, the Glass House Mountains are a defining image of south-east Queensland. The mountains are rich in natural history and form a breathtaking landscape as well as important habitat for plants and animals.
Captain James Cook recorded and named the Glass House Mountains when charting the eastern coast of Australia.
In his Journal of 17 May 1770, Cook wrote:
“These hills lie but a little way inland, and not far from each other: they are remarkable for the singular form of their elevation, which very much resembles a glass house, and for this reason I called them the Glass Houses: the northern most of the three is the highest and largest; there are several other peaked hills inland to the northward of these, but these are not nearly so remarkable…”.
A series of volcanic eruptions active 24–27 million years ago led to the formation of at least 12 peaks. They range in height from the southern-most peak of Saddleback (Mt Elimbah) at 109 metres, to the highest peak, Mt Beerwah, at 556 metres. 
The mountains provide a glimpse into the volcanic history of the eastern Australia mainland, and represent the best example of an eroded central volcano complex in Australia. Recent research has also led to a better understanding of the dynamic processes and evolution of rock types making up these volcanic features.
A diverse range of vegetation, from rainforest gullies to heaths on the summits, provides homes for a variety of animals, including around 170 species of birds. Koalas, lace monitors, echidnas and eastern grey kangaroos are also found in the landscape.
The inspirational landscape has evoked emotional responses in many artists and has resulted in a number of works by significant Australians such as Lawrence Daws, Judith Wright, Conrad Martens, Peter Kennedy, David Malouf and Fred Williams, in a range of media including music, painting, poetry, photography and film. 
The mountains and surrounding area are well known to Aboriginal people in south-east Queensland. Numerous sites have been recorded in the Glass House Mountains area that show varied aspects of Aboriginal ways of life and the ancient occupation of this landscape. These include axe grinding grooves, quarries, physical signs of past camping places and other activities, burial places and rock art sites. The mountains lie close to traditional pathways and the peaks are individually important in Aboriginal traditions.
The Glass House Mountains continue to be of spiritual significance to the Aboriginal people of the region. The Gubbi Gubbi and Jinibara maintain strong links with the area and this important landscape. 
The Glass House Mountains National Landscape attracts large numbers of visitors. The steep geological formations make the area attractive to rock climbers, and the peaks and surrounding lands continue to be popular destinations for visitors wanting to bushwalk, picnic, and enjoy the volcanic scenery.
National Heritage List: 3 August 2006

Rippon Lea House and Gardens
Victoria
Situated in the Melbourne suburb of Elsternwick, Rippon Lea House and Gardens extends over almost six hectares.
Rippon Lea is an outstanding example of a late 19th century ‘Boom’ style or ‘Victorian Italianate’ urban estate. It was constructed when there was considerable wealth in Victoria which led to the development of numerous ornate mansions.
In 1868 Frederick Thomas Sargood bought 27 hectares of scrub land at Elsternwick to establish his dream home and garden. He named the property after his mother, Emma Rippon, adding ‘lea’, an old English word for meadow.
In 1869 construction began on the two-storey, 15 room house. It was designed by Joseph Reed of Reed & Barnes, Melbourne’s most important architect of the time. The house was built of polychrome brickwork, a new material in Australia when most of the important buildings were stone or rendered brick. Rippon Lea was among the finest polychrome buildings in Victoria.
Unusual design features of Rippon Lea include the outdoor pavilion or piazza adjacent to the dining room, two upstairs bathrooms, and the basement service rooms which were uncommon in 19th century Australia. 
Sargood made substantial alterations and additions to Rippon Lea from 1882 until 1903, reflecting his increased wealth. Although he used different architects over the period, the style was unusually consistent.
Rippon Lea was sold by Sargood’s widow after his death in  1903. The property passed into the hands of a succession of wealthy Melbourne families, whose alterations to the house and garden demonstrate the extravagant lifestyles of affluent society of the period. 
Magnificent ornamental gardens surround the house, including shrubberies, a lake with a grotto, a bridge, boathouse, large fernery and a lookout mound with a four-level tower. Hedges separate the ornamental gardens from extensive utilitarian areas, such as the kitchen garden, an orchard of historically significant fruit varieties and paddocks. 
Sargood devised a sophisticated system for water self-sufficiency for the house and garden. An underground water collection, irrigation and drainage system, with water pumped by a windmill, ensured that the garden flourished. This system—one of the earliest, most complex and relatively intact examples of 19th century underground engineering irrigation to maintain a private garden—is now being reinstated at Rippon Lea.
Today Rippon Lea is in very good condition. The main part of the house is largely as it was in the 19th century, and adjoining it is the intact 1930s ballroom and pool complex. The dining room was redecorated in the 1930s and is intact from this period. Since 1972 the National Trust has reinstated the drawing room to its 1930s appearance, redecorated the nursery and a first floor bedroom, changed a bedroom into an art gallery and installed a new kitchen on the ground floor.
The estate has been open to the pubic for more than 30 years. It is a popular function venue and picnic spot, and offers a respected educational program for students.
National Heritage List: 11 August 2006

Flemington Racecourse
Victoria
“Nowhere in the world have I encountered a festival… that has such a magnificent appeal to the whole nation. The Cup astonishes me.”
– Mark Twain, 1895
Flemington is one of the world’s premier racecourses. During the last 160 years since the flats beside the Maribyrnong River were first used for racing,
Flemington has been transformed from an uneven track in rough paddocks into a richly grassed acreage supporting one of the finest racing surfaces in the world.
Set on 125 hectares, it is one of the biggest racecourses and longest race tracks in Australia. Flemington is famous for the ‘Straight Six’—the six furlong (1200 metre) straight that makes it one of the most challenging tracks in the world. The Straight Six is a favourite with Australian and international jockeys, giving horses a chance to come from well back in the field to be first past the post.
In the hearts and minds of Australians, Flemington Racecourse is synonymous with the Melbourne Cup. Since it began in 1861, the Melbourne Cup has been the ‘race that stops the nation’. Run on the first Tuesday in November, the Cup is one of the world’s most challenging horse races, taking more than three minutes. Kingston Rule holds the record for the fastest run, winning in 1990, in three minutes 16.3 seconds.
The Melbourne Cup is recognised as Australia’s premier horse race. Along with the English Derby, America’s Kentucky Derby and France’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, it is one of the world’s great horse races.
Flemington Racecourse has long been associated with Australian racing culture’s elite horses, jockeys, trainers, breeders and owners. Many of Australia’s greatest racing champions have won the Cup, including Carbine in 1890, and the legendary Phar Lap in 1930.
The Flemington Spring Carnival and the Melbourne Cup are also major events for Australian fashion. The tradition of Oaks Day as ‘ladies day’ dates from 1885, when a group of fashionably dressed ladies complained of the damage to their elegant gowns by the crush of people on Cup Day. It quickly became the fashion event of the Melbourne calendar, a tradition that continues today. 
In 1965 there was more interest in a drama being played out off the track.  Flemington’s special guest, British model Jean Shrimpton, caused a scandal on Derby Day by wearing a sleeveless white mini-dress with a hemline four inches above the knee. Disapproving eyes were quick to note she was not wearing the expected Flemington fashion accessories—hat, gloves and stockings. The outfit shocked the conservative Melbourne establishment and was reported in media around the world. The ‘Miniskirt Affair’ inspired young women around Australia to take up the new fashion. 
Today the fun and glamour at Flemington on Melbourne Cup Day has entrenched the first Tuesday in November as an important part of Australia’s heritage, culture and identity.
National Heritage List: 7 November 2006

Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, Lion Island, 
Long Island and Spectacle Island Nature Reserves
New South Wales
A centre for biodiversity within the Sydney metropolitan area, Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and adjacent island nature reserves are home to many plants and animals and provide a bush retreat for many people.
Covering an area of approximately 15 000 hectares, 
Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park with its diverse vegetation, sandstone escarpments and picturesque waterways welcomes more than two million visitors a year.
The national park has been a conservation area since 1894 and includes Barrenjoey Head and West Head. Nearby, in the lower reaches of the Hawkesbury River, are the Lion Island, Long Island and Spectacle Island Nature Reserves, which contribute to the National Heritage significance of the area through outstanding biodiversity.
A diverse range of vegetation, from open forest and woodland to swamps and warm temperate rainforest, provide homes for a variety of plants and animals, including more than 1000 native plant species, 100 moths and butterflies and uncommon native animals such as the spotted-tailed quoll, the southern brown bandicoot and the eastern bent-wing bat. 
Lion Island, adjoining the National Park, supports the largest and most successful breeding colony of little penguins in the Sydney region.
Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park gives Australians a strong sense of our cultural history, with sites that display evidence of Indigenous occupation over at least 7400 years. Two local clans, the Garrigal people from around Broken Bay and the Terramerragal people from the Turramurra area, occupied Ku-ring-gai. 
Traditional rock engravings and paintings dating back 600 years, grinding grooves, stone arrangements and over 800 documented burial and occupational sites within the Park provide a significant connection to our Indigenous heritage. 
In the early 19th century, European settlers used the Ku-ring-gai area for timber and boat building. They also collected materials for producing important resources such as soda ash, salt and shell lime. 
The section of Pittwater within Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park was closely associated with the writing of the Australian constitution. In March 1891 the Drafting Committee of the first Constitutional Convention revised the draft constitution aboard the paddle steamer Lucinda when it lay at anchor in the basin. Although this 1891 draft was not implemented, it later served as the starting point for the Constitutional Convention of 1897–98.
Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park is where the Hawkesbury River meets the sea. It holds secretive, winding creeks, sheltered beaches, hidden coves and wide expanses of deep blue water. Stunning landscapes, including drowned river valley estuaries, steep sandstone cliffs and plateaus dominate the area. These landforms date back to the early Jurassic and late Triassic periods making them approximately 190 to 225 million years old. Long, Lion and Spectacle Islands are remnant peaks from before water levels rose. 
Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park is the earliest reserve established primarily for nature conservation. In the 1880s Eccleston Du Faur successfully lobbied the New South Wales Government to protect its native flowers from the threat of expanding settlement. 
National Heritage List: 15 December 2006

Warrumbungle National Park
New South Wales
The distinctive and unusual jagged skyline of the Warrumbungle National Park, with its domes and spires separated by forested ridges and deep gorges, rises boldly from the surrounding plains and tablelands.
The name ‘Warrumbungle’ comes from the Kamilaroi language, and is believed to mean ‘crooked mountains’. The dramatic Warrumbungles are often described as a place where east meets west as the more humid eastern landscape gradually merges into the dry plains of the west. 
The shield volcano that made the Warrumbungles was active about 13–17 million years ago and represents one of the larger volcanoes that formed a north-south line stretching from northern Queensland to southern Victoria. 
Ninety per cent of the volcanic cone has since been eroded, leaving the uncommonly bold volcanic land forms, some reaching heights of more than 700 metres.
Some of the best known landmarks are Belougery Spire, Belougery Split Rock, Crater Bluff, Bluff Mountain, the Breadknife and Mount Exmouth. 
The Breadknife, a 90-metre high blade that stretches for half a kilometre, was formed when volcanic processes and subsequent erosion sculpted a spectacular ‘knife’ of rock that cuts through the landscape. Bluff Mountain is the largest lava dome of the Warrumbungle volcano and has a near-vertical 250-metre high face. 
Renowned Australian photographers Frank Hurley and Max Dupain are among the artists and photographers who have been inspired by the raw beauty of the natural sculptures. The distinctive and spectacular volcanic landscape of the Warrumbungles is unrivalled elsewhere in Australia.
The combination of the arid western plains, moist eastern slopes and elevation above the surrounding plains, means the Warrumbungles provide a haven for an exceptionally high number of species, particularly when compared with most other inland sites in southern Australia. 
Wattles and small inland trees dominate the drier western slopes while the lush, cooler conditions of the sheltered southern and eastern areas are perfect for forests of taller trees with other moisture loving vegetation, such as ferns and orchids, found in the gullies.
The eastern grey kangaroo occur in abundance and emus, wallabies and koalas are also seen regularly. Other animals frequently seen or heard in the area are the pobblebonk burrowing frog, wedge-tailed eagle, sulphur crested cockatoo and red-rumped parrot. Sometimes visitors are lucky enough to see rare animals like the brush-tailed rock wallaby, superb parrot and regent honeyeater.
Archaeological evidence indicates that Indigenous people have occupied the Warrumbungles for at least the last 5000 years. The first European record of the Warrumbungles was by Surveyor-General Oxley in 1818 on his second inland expedition.
Due to the rugged landscape the Warrumbungles were largely left alone, with the exception of selective logging by the early settlers, and much of the Warrumbungles continue to retain their original character. 
National Heritage List: 15 December 2006

Royal National Park and 
Garawarra State Conservation Area
New South Wales
Within 40 kilometres of the centre of Australia’s largest and most populous city, Sydney, lies a landscape of sparkling beaches, spectacular coastal cliffs, wild heathlands and windswept woodlands that host a glorious diversity of plant and animal life.
Australia’s first national park, Royal National Park, together with the adjacent Garawarra State Conservation Area, has one of the richest concentrations of plant species in temperate Australia with more than 1000 species. This diverse vegetation supports a rich array of birds, reptiles and butterflies.
Royal National Park was the second national park to be established in the world, after Yellowstone in the United States. Its declaration in 1879 marked the beginning of Australia’s conservation movement and of the development of Australia’s national park system.
Following the gold rush of the mid-1800s Sydney expanded rapidly to become one of the world’s larger cities, and demand grew for the creation of recreation areas to relieve crowded, polluted inner city areas. An area of 18 000 acres, including ocean frontage, was reserved from sale and on 26 April 1879 it was dedicated as a reserve for the use of the public as the National Park. During the 1954 visit to Australia by Queen Elizabeth II, the park was renamed Royal National Park.
Although the park was established as a recreation area it also marked a time when the Australian public began developing a greater appreciation for the natural environment. Social changes, such as improvements in working conditions and increased leisure time, better rail transport and the arrival of the motor car, enabled more people to visit the park. Royal National Park contains many features developed for recreation, such as the boating area, causeway and picnic lawns at Audley and Lady Carrington Drive.
Greater access to, and use of, this beautiful area contributed to the emerging interest in conserving Australia’s natural places. This interest was further demonstrated by an increase in nature writing and painting, especially the popular picturesque style of painting, and in the popularity of activities such as bushwalking and early nature tourism.
The emergence of the conservation movement was timely for the long term survival of the region’s rainforest and wet eucalypt forests, which contain red cedar and other valuable timbers. About 75 per cent of the rainforest of the Illawarra has been cleared since European settlement; making these reserves especially important for conservation purposes.
The eastern side of Royal National Park supports heathlands rich in plants and animals. The sandstone plateau contains more than 500 species of flowering plants, including heaths, peas, wattles, orchids, grevilleas, banksias, waratahs and the spectacular Gymea lily. The cliff top dunes to the east and south of Bundeena support a wide variety of large shrub species which once covered the eastern suburbs of Sydney.
The abundant and diverse plant life supports a variety of insects, mammals (43 species), reptiles (40 species) and amphibians (30 species). The area is especially rich in birds (231 species), including many honeyeaters and a variety of rainforest birds.
National Heritage List: 15 December 2006

Grampians National Park (Gariwerd)
Victoria
Grampians National Park (known as Gariwerd by local Indigenous people), in central-western Victoria, is widely known for its rugged beauty, spectacular displays of spring wildflowers, and rich Indigenous rock art.
The Grampians are a stunningly beautiful landscape—craggy peaks, towering cliffs, high rocky plateaus, rock formations, waterfalls and clear streams, lookouts with panoramic views over the forests, woodlands, wetlands, fern gullies, and spectacular spring flowers. 
The strength of the dramatic landforms has inspired numerous works of painting, poetry, literature, photography and film. As an island of bushland in a largely cleared agricultural landscape, the Grampians support over 975 native plant species, representing over one third of the total Victorian flora. Many of these species are found nowhere else.
European settlers arrived following favourable reports of potential grazing land by Major Thomas Mitchell, who scaled the highest peak in the Grampians, Mt Duwil (Mt William) in 1836 and named the mountains after the rugged region in his native Scotland.
The Grampians soon became a centre for farming, mining and timber production, and a source of water for surrounding farmland. The area was reserved as State Forest in 1872 and as a National Park in 1984.
During spring the park supports a rich and colourful display of wildflowers, including Grampians boronia, blue pin-cushion lily, Grampians parrot-pea, and Grampians thryptomene. The area is abundant in ‘bacon and eggs’, pea flowers, and has more than 75 orchid species. 
The variety of vegetation, topography and habitats provides shelter and food for at least 230 bird species. The low, open shrubby woodlands in the park support many different nectar-feeding birds and the tall open forests are important for hollow-dependent species such as the powerful owl.
Wetlands, particularly those in the south of the park, support a diverse community of waterbirds, including the great egret. The numerous cliff faces provide nesting sites for the peregrine falcon and large populations of emus are found throughout the lowland areas. The diverse habitats throughout the park also support a wide range of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, native fish, water beetles, spiders and butterflies.
Many threatened species of plants and animals are found in the Grampians, including the Grampians pincushion lily and the southern pipewort. Nationally threatened animals recorded in the Park include the endangered red-tailed black cockatoo and the smoky mouse. There is also the vulnerable swift parrot, warty bell frog, brush-tailed rock wallaby, long-nosed potoroo and heath rat.
Aboriginal people have lived here for thousands of years, leaving the legacy of an extraordinarily rich array of Aboriginal rock art sites, with motifs that include depictions of human figures, animal tracks and birds. Notable rock art sites are: Billimina (Glenisla shelter), Jananginj Njani (Camp of the Emu’s Foot), Manja (Cave of Hands), Larngibunja (Cave of Fishes), Ngamadjidj (Cave of Ghosts) and Gulgurn Manja (Flat Rock).
National Heritage List: 15 December 2006

Stirling Range National Park
Western Australia
‘The irregular shaped mountains still in sight being seven leagues inland, and these entirely distinct, are beginning to shew themselves. Except these we see nothing inland…’
Matthew Flinders recorded the first European sighting of the inland mountain range he named Mount Rugged in January 1802, during his exploration of the southern coast of Australia in the Investigator. Known as Koi Kyeunu-ruff by the Mineng and Goreng people, the Stirling Range was named by John Septimus Roe on 4 November 1835 after Captain James Stirling, the first Governor of Western Australia.
Today the range dominates the landscape as an island for native flora and fauna among a patchwork of highly productive farmland. The park receives thousands of visitors each year, drawn by the beautiful carpets of spring wildflowers and the challenge of climbing the distinctive peak, Bluff Knoll.
Formed over millions of years of weathering and erosion, the Stirling Range of south-west Western Australia is regarded as an area of great biogeographic and evolutionary interest and displays one of the richest floras in the world. The range stretches for 65 kilometres from east to west and the tallest peak, Bluff Knoll, stands at 1059 metres above sea level.
The Mineng and Goreng people are believed to have originally lived in and around the mountains. Many creation stories reflect the mystery and danger of the jagged peaks of the Stirling Range. Of particular focus is the Bluff Knoll. The Nyoongar people of the area referred to Bluff Knoll as Bular Mial (many eyes) or Bala Mial (his eyes), as they believed the rocks on the bluff were shaped like the eyes of an ancestral master spirit that are visible on the mountain.
The south-west of Western Australia is internationally recognised as a biodiversity hotspot, and represents one of only 34 sites in the world that is exceptionally rich in species. Despite low soil fertility, Stirling Range National Park supports 1500 plant species, which is more than in the entire British Isles. At least 87 of these species are found nowhere else in the world.
The beautiful and diverse vegetation of the Stirling Range National Park provides valuable shelter for many bird and animal species including parrots, honeyeaters and thornbills, the western pygmy possum and the western grey kangaroo.
The deeply incised south-facing gullies provide a thriving sanctuary for a diverse range of ancient species including land snails, trapdoor spiders and giant earthworms. These species date back millions of years to the time when Australia was part of the Gondwanaland super-continent.
Listed as one of Australia’s 25 best hikes, Bluff Knoll provides an admirable and rewarding challenge for bushwalkers, rock climbers and abseilers.
The imposing jagged peaks of the Stirling Range combined with serene 360-degree views and the breathtaking beauty of the Stirling Range National Park ensures a truly memorable experience for all visitors.
National Heritage List: 15 December 2006

Flora Fossil Site, Yea
Victoria
An ordinary roadside cutting on Limestone Road, Yea, Victoria marks a place that overturned long held scientific understanding of how and when plants evolved.
Although discovered in 1875 the significance of the Yea flora fossils was not realised until 60 years later when they were studied by pioneering scientist Dr Isabel Cookson (pictured) in 1935. 
Dr Cookson identified the remains as ancient vascular land plants. Her findings were globally significant as they suggested that not only did complex land plants develop much earlier than previously thought, but that they also first evolved in the Southern Hemisphere.
The plant, known today as Baragwanathia, first appeared around 415 million years ago, at a time when Australia was still part of the Gondwana super continent, and long before dinosaurs walked the Earth. The fossils are the oldest of their kind in the world.
The plant would have resembled today’s club mosses or tassel ferns. It had a vascular system, with sap-carrying veins, leaves, roots and woody tissue, and was more complex than other forms of vegetation from this period, such as marine algae. 
Baragwanathia plants were large in form with long narrow leaves and branches up to one metre long. They were quite unlike other land plants occurring at the time which featured small, naked stems.  
Scientists are able to determine the age of rocks by identifying the type of graptolite fossils present. Graptolites were ancient free-floating colonial marine organisms and are particularly important for dating rocks during the Silurian period, when life adapted from the sea to the land. 
The Yea site provides the earliest record of vascular land plants in Australia. The plants show remarkable adaptations that helped them to make the difficult transition from the marine environment to life on land. For this reason, and because the Yea Baragwanathia fossils are considerably older than any similar ones found in the Northern Hemisphere, the Yea Fossil Site is of international significance. 
The site is listed in the National Heritage List for its significant contribution to the world’s understanding of our ancient earth’s secrets and for its association with Dr Cookson, one of the most eminent palaeobotanists of the 20th century.
Known around the world by admiring colleagues as ‘the indefatigable Cookie’, Dr Cookson was one of the first professional women scientists in Australia, graduating from the University of Melbourne in 1916, where she also tutored and lectured in botany and later became a research fellow. 
Dr Cookson’s work took her to London and Manchester in the 1920s, where she worked closely with, and influenced, other leading scientists of the day. Her published research, spanning 1921 to 1970, and often self-funded, produced great insights into the history and evolution of the continent’s flora. 
The Cooksonia plant genus, containing the oldest known land plants was named in her honour, and the Botanical Society of America’s Isabel Cookson Award commemorates her work. 
National Heritage List: 11 January 2007

Ediacara Fossil Site
South Australia
Hundreds of millions of years ago, long before dinosaurs roamed the Earth, most of eastern Australia was an ocean lapping onto what is now South Australia and the Northern Territory. 
The seas were inhabited by soft-bodied organisms that we now call the Ediacara biota. Some of these organisms were smothered by sand on shallow seafloors and fossilised as the sand turned to stone. As sea levels changed, continents moved and mountains were built, the seafloor layers became part of what we today know as the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. 
In 1946, while exploring for minerals in the Flinders Ranges region, South Australian geologist Reginald Sprigg discovered fossil imprints in sandstone at the old Ediacara mine. It was the first time that the fossilised remains of an entire community of ancient soft-bodied creatures had been found in abundance anywhere in the world. The fossils preserved at Ediacara record the first known multi-cellular animal life on Earth, predating the Cambrian Period (more than 540 million years old). This diverse and exquisitely preserved community provides an extraordinary insight into the evolution of life on earth and one that has warranted its own geologic time division—the ‘Ediacaran Period’.
Up until the Ediacara discovery, scientists thought that only organisms with hard parts, such as shells, teeth or bones, could be preserved as fossils. The Ediacara fossils demonstrate how organisms without hard parts can be preserved as casts and moulds.
The Ediacara fossils range in size from a few centimetres up to more than a metre long. They resemble soft corals, sponges, flat-segmented worms, molluscs, crustaceans and include possible ancestors of trilobites and vertebrates. Impressions of the largest known animal of its time, Dickinsonia rex, have also been found near Ediacara. Preserved as flat, circular to ribbon-shaped impressions, with fine segmentation, Dickinsonia is interpreted as a worm-like creature that absorbed organic matter from the seafloor. 
There are many questions surrounding these ancient organisms including how they lived, fed, reproduced, became dispersed around the globe and whether they have living descendents. Some scientists think that the Ediacara biota may represent multi-cellular ‘experiments’ that bear little resemblance to living groups of organisms while others consider that they represent ancestors to the modern fauna.
The Ediacaran Period was the first new geological period to be declared in 120 years and the first to be based on the geology of the Southern Hemisphere. Describing an interval from 635 to 542 million years ago, the start of the Ediacaran Period corresponds to the end of a world-wide glaciation known as ‘Snowball Earth’ as well as significant changes in ocean chemistry.
Fossils of the Ediacara biota represent a biodiversity revolution: the first explosion in abundance, size, complexity and diversity of life forms since the origin of life some 3000 million years earlier. Around 30 other Ediacara localities are now known globally, including sites in Namibia, Russia, Newfoundland, north-west Canada, United Kingdom and Siberia. 
Examples of the Flinders Ranges Ediacara fossils can be seen at the South Australian Museum.
National Heritage List: 11 January 2007

Sydney Harbour Bridge
New South Wales
The Sydney Harbour Bridge is 
considered the world’s greatest arch bridge and is one of Australia’s best known and photographed landmarks. 
An engineering masterpiece, the bridge represented a pivotal step in the development of modern Sydney and an important part of the technical revolution of the 1930s.
Known by locals as the ‘Coathanger’, the bridge celebrated its 75th birthday in 2007, with its official opening in March 1932. 
Discussions about building a bridge from the northern to the southern shore of Sydney Harbour had started as early as 1815.
It took some time for this to become a reality with design submissions invited in 1900. All designs were deemed inappropriate or unsatisfactory for one reason or another and the idea eventually lost momentum. However, after World War One more serious plans were made, with a general design for the Sydney Harbour Bridge prepared by Dr JJC Bradfield. The New South Wales Government invited worldwide tenders for the construction of the bridge in 1922 and the contract was awarded to English firm Dorman Long and Co of Middlesbrough, England.
Bradfield’s design involved more than the bridge, it was the key element in an integrated transport system including an extensive network of rail and roadways leading to the bridge. These in turn were incorporated into the broader Sydney road, rail and tram system. 
Construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge construction started in 1924 and took 1400 men eight years to build at a cost of £4.2 million. Six million hand driven rivets and 53 000 tonnes of steel were used in its construction. 
The construction of the bridge represented a new era for Australians. An important part of the technical revolution of the 1930s, the bridge was seen as evidence of Australia’s industrial maturity. 
The opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge was a momentous occasion, drawing an estimated one million people. The ceremony was attended by almost the entire population of Sydney, as well as huge numbers from around New South Wales, and thousands from interstate. 
The New South Wales Premier at the time, the Honourable John T Lang, officiated at the opening and officially declared the bridge open. However, before he could cut the ribbon to open the bridge, Captain Francis de Groot of the New Guard, disguised as a military horseman, slashed it with his sword, believing the only person to open the bridge should be a member of the royal family. The incident has become a part of Australian folklore and a symbol of the perceived national character trait of rebellion against authority.
It was part of JCC Bradfield’s vision for the bridge that it be used “at times of national rejoicing”. Over the years since its opening community ceremonial and celebratory occasions have regularly centred on Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The Bridge Climb started in 1998 and attracts tourists and locals alike, eager to climb this magnificent monument for both the challenge and the remarkable views. From the bridge visitors can also enjoy breathtaking views of the Sydney Opera House, another of Australia’s iconic landmarks.
National Heritage List: 19 March 2007

Echuca Wharf
Victoria
Echuca Wharf is an outstanding survivor of the booming Murray River trade of the late 1800s, attesting to the critical role that the river trade played in the pastoral boom and in the rapid economic growth and development of the colonies during this time.
Between 1855 and 1859, various voyages tested the practical limits of river trade on the Murray, the Murrumbidgee and the Darling rivers. It was soon recognised that the only reliable waters that could be safely navigated were downstream from Echuca on the Murray.
The establishment of the river trade reshaped pastoral industries. Station owners had previously favoured cattle for overland transport to market. However, the arrival of river steamers made sheep farming a better economic option and sheep numbers grew rapidly in the Riverina and western pastoral districts. The wharf and railway at Echuca provided direct access to markets and this led to the rapid expansion in the scale and value of the pastoral holdings, which in turn increased the demand for river trade.
The Port of Echuca quickly became the key centre for this burgeoning trade and the second biggest port in Victoria. It enjoyed a number of strategic advantages, including its close proximity and rail link to Melbourne. At its peak, 200 vessels a week entered the Port of Echuca. 
Echuca Wharf was erected by the Public Works Department between 1865–7 to accommodate the increasing trade. As the trade grew, so did the wharf. It was extended in 1877 and 1879, reaching a maximum length of 332 metres. 
Towering above the river and surrounding landscape, the wharf was constructed entirely of river red gum timber, felled and milled locally. At three storeys high, the wharf allowed for a 10-metre variation in the winter and summer levels of the Murray and enabled a year round unloading of goods. The cargo shed, cranes, jib and railway track, although not original, reflect the crucial relationship between the railway station and the river, which facilitated trade from the Riverina through to Victoria’s sea ports.
Echuca Wharf and its connection to the railway facilitated the movement of goods to and from points across the Riverina and western New South Wales to ports of Melbourne and Adelaide. The link of wharf and rail at Echuca created a vast commercial empire for Melbourne, stretching to the south-west of New South Wales.
The river trade began to decline as the financial crisis of the 1890s hit the national economy hard, and the extension of the railway network in New South Wales and Victoria took away valuable trade.
During the Second World War, Victorian Railways began to demolish the wharf to provide firewood for Melbourne, reducing it to its current length of 75.5 metres; one quarter of its maximum length.
Echuca is regarded as the home of the largest number of paddleboats in the world. Since the 1960s, the wharf and paddle-steamers have found a new life servicing the tourist trade, which contributes to the sense that Echuca Wharf remains a working port.
National Heritage List: 26 April 2007

Australian Fossil Mammal Sites
Naracoorte (South Australia) 
Riversleigh (Queensland)
Riversleigh and Naracoorte are among the world’s greatest fossil sites. 
They are a superb illustration of the key stages of the evolution of the unique wildlife of Australia, a continent where the evolution of mammals has been the most isolated and distinctive in the world.
Over 2000 kilometres separate the two sites. Riversleigh, which covers 100km2, is confined to the watershed of the Gregory River located in north-western Queensland. The site at Naracoorte, South Australia, covers 3km2 and comprises limestone caves. 
Riversleigh is one of the world’s richest Oligo–Miocene mammal records, linking that period (15–25 million years ago) to the predominantly modern assemblages of the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs. At least 20 million years of mammal evolution is represented here, providing the first records of many distinctive groups of living marsupials.
The extensive fossil deposits at Riversleigh are encased in hard, rough limestone, which was formed in lime-rich freshwater pools. The variety of deposits at Riversleigh has led to an understanding of how the environment has changed over time from a rich rainforest community to semi-arid grassland, and how the animals that lived there have changed too.
The cool caves at Naracoorte stand in stark contrast to the semi-arid conditions at Riversleigh. The fossils in the Naracoorte Caves illustrate faunal change spanning several ice ages, highlighting the impacts of climatic change on Australia’s mammals from at least 500 000 years ago and also the more recent interaction between humans and Australia’s unique animal populations. 
The Naracoorte fossils span the probable time of the arrival of humans in Australia, and this is valuable in analysing the complex relationships between humans and their environment. Records of past climates are being elucidated from limestone formations in the cave and the impacts of climate on faunal change are being revealed. Further research at the Naracoorte Caves sites is expected to provide a deeper understanding of Pleistocene life in south-eastern Australia, including details of climate and vegetation associated with the fauna. 
Both sites provide evidence of key stages in the evolution of the animals of the world’s most isolated continent. The history of mammal lineages in modern Australia can be traced through these fossil deposits and, as a consequence, there is a better understanding of the conservation status of living mammals and their communities.
While there are other important Australian fossil mammal sites, Riversleigh and Naracoorte are outstanding for the extreme diversity and quality of their fossils. The sites provide links through time that unify the biota of the past with those of today in the Wet Tropics of Queensland, the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia and Kakadu National Park World Heritage areas.
National Heritage List: 21 May 2007
World Heritage List: 1994

Fraser Island
Queensland
Fraser Island (K’gari) is the largest sand island in the world and has immense scientific importance. Half the world’s perched freshwater dune lakes are found here and its coastal dunes are still evolving. 
Nowhere else does sand support such majestic remnants of tall rainforest. Fraser Island contains an outstanding example of patterned fens, and a rich diversity of plants and animals adapted to the nutrient-poor, acidic environment. 
Stretching more than 120 kilometres along the southern coast of Queensland and covering 1840km2, it is the largest sand island in the world. A place of exceptional beauty, it is characterised by its long white beaches flanked by strikingly coloured sand cliffs, majestic tall rainforests, and numerous freshwater lakes.
The massive sand deposits that make up the island contain a continuous record of climatic and sea level changes over the past 700 000 years. Fraser Island features complex dune systems that are still evolving and an array of dune lakes that is exceptional in its number, diversity and age.
The highest dunes on the island reach up to 240 metres above sea level. Forty perched dune lakes can be found on the island. These lakes are formed when organic matter gradually builds up and hardens in depressions created by the wind.
Fraser Island also has barrage lakes, formed when moving sand dunes block a watercourse, and ‘window’ lakes, formed when a depression exposes part of the regional water table.
A variety of vegetation types grow on the island, ranging from coastal heath to subtropical rainforests. It is the only place in the world where tall rainforests are found growing on sand dunes.
The low ‘wallum’ heaths on the island are of particular evolutionary and ecological significance, providing magnificent wildflower displays in spring and summer.
The island has more than 350 recorded species recorded. It is a particularly important as a staging site for migratory shorebirds, and for the endangered ground parrot, which is found in the wallum heathlands.
Few mammal species are present on the island, the most common being flying foxes. The dingo population is regarded as the most pure strain remaining in eastern Australia.
The unique lakes and patterned fens on Fraser Island are poor habitats for aquatic fauna because of the purity, acidity and low nutrient levels of the water. Some frog species, appropriately called ‘acid frogs’, have adapted to survive in this difficult environment.
Called K’gari by its Aboriginal inhabitants, the island reveals Aboriginal occupation of at least 5000 years. Research indicates that there was a small permanent population of 400–600 that swelled seasonally to perhaps 2000–3000 in the winter when seafood resources were abundant. Fraser Island contains many sites of archaeological, social and spiritual significance.
National Heritage List: 21 May 2007
World Heritage List: 1992

Gondwana Rainforests of Australia
New South Wales and Queensland
The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia contain remnants of the great rainforests that once covered most of Australia.
These reserves feature striking vertical cliffs, the world’s best preserved erosion caldera, wild rivers and many impressive high waterfalls.
The area is one of the best places on earth to see ancient ferns and Araucaria such as Hoop pines.
An outstanding record of flowering plants, true songbirds and other rare or threatened animals of the most ancient lineages show that these reserves have played a significant role in providing refuge to species for millions of years.   
In May 2007, a number of rainforest reserves located on the Great Escarpment of eastern New South Wales and south-east Queensland, known as the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, were inscribed on the National Heritage list for their outstanding natural universal value. The listing includes 42 separate Crown reserves located between Newcastle and Brisbane.
Rainforest occurs in New South Wales and south-east Queensland as discontinuous patches surrounded by fire prone eucalypt forest and agricultural lands. These patches range in size from tiny gully stands to lush forests covering large valleys and ranges. The Gondwana Rainforests include the most extensive areas of subtropical rainforest in the world, large areas of warm temperate rainforest and nearly all of the Antarctic beech cool temperate rainforest in Australia. 
Rainforest once covered most of the ancient southern supercontinent Gondwana and remains the most ancient type of vegetation in Australia. The Gondwana Rainforests provide a living link with the evolution of Australia. Few places on earth contain so many plants and animals which remain relatively unchanged from their ancestors in the fossil record. Some of the oldest elements of the world’s ferns and conifers are found here and there is a concentration of primitive plant families that are directly linked with the origin and spread of flowering plants more than 100 million years ago. 
A range of geological and environmental influences in the Gondwana Rainforests determine where forest communities grow. This process has occurred over millions of years and will continue to change the forest mosaic into the future. As a result, many plants and animals are restricted to a few sites or occur in widely separated populations.
High waterfalls crashing into steep gorges are spectacular examples of an important ongoing natural process—erosion. Erosion by coastal rivers created the Great Escarpment and the steep-sided caldera of the Tweed Valley surrounding Mt Warning. This towering mountain was once the buried plug of an ancient vast volcano. Today, rainforest grows on the fertile, well-watered soils that remain.
National Heritage List: 21 May 2007
World Heritage List: 1986 (extended in 1994)

Great Barrier Reef
Queensland
The Great Barrier Reef is a vast site of remarkable variety and beauty containing the world’s largest collection of coral reefs and an extraordinary diversity of species. 
The reef’s 300 coral or sand cays and 600 continental islands contribute to making this a truly spectacular landscape, combining marine and terrestrial features on an unparalled scale.
The National Heritage area covers 348 000km2 on the north-east continental shelf of Australia. Larger than Italy, it is one of the best known marine protected areas and the world’s most extensive coral reef system. It contains some of the richest biological diversity found anywhere. 
The Great Barrier Reef contains extensive areas of seagrass, mangrove, sandy and muddy seabed communities, inter-reefal areas, deep oceanic waters and island communities. Contrary to popular belief, the Great Barrier Reef is not a continuous barrier, but a broken maze of around 2900 individual reefs, of which 760 are fringing reefs along the mainland or around islands. The reefs range in size from less than one hectare to over 1000km2, and in shape from flat platform reefs to elongated ribbon reefs.
The Great Barrier Reef provides habitat for many diverse forms of marine life. There are an estimated 1500 species of fish and over 360 species of hard, reef-building corals. More than 4000 mollusc species and over 1500 species of sponges have been identified. 
Other well-represented animal groups include anemones, marine worms, crustaceans and echinoderms.
The extensive seagrass beds are an important feeding ground for the dugong, a mammal internationally listed as vulnerable. The reef also supports a variety of fleshy algae that are grazed by turtles, fish, sea urchins and molluscs. 
The reef contains nesting grounds of world significance for the endangered loggerhead turtle, and for green, hawksbill and flatback turtles, which are all listed as vulnerable. It is also a breeding area for humpback whales that come from the Antarctic to give birth in the warm waters.
The islands and cays support around 215 bird species, many of which have breeding colonies there. Reef herons, osprey, pelicans, frigatebirds, sea eagles and shearwaters are among the seabirds that have been recorded. 
The Great Barrier Reef is also of cultural importance, containing many archaeological sites of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin, including fish traps, middens, rock quarries, story sites and rock art. More than 70 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Traditional Owner groups have long continuing relationships with the Great Barrier Reef region and its natural resources. There are over 30 historic shipwrecks in the area, and on the islands are ruins, operating lighthouses and other sites that are of historical significance.
National Heritage List: 21 May 2007
World Heritage List: 1981

Greater Blue Mountains
New South Wales
The Greater Blue Mountains extends over 10 000km2 of mostly forested landscape on a sandstone plateau inland from Sydney, New South Wales. 
The area includes a wide range of eucalypt communities and large tracts of wilderness. The high wilderness quality of much of the area has ensured the integrity of its ecosystems and the protection of its heritage values.
It is an area of breathtaking views, rugged tablelands, sheer cliffs, deep inaccessible valleys, swamps, waterfalls and wild rivers. The unique plants and animals that live here relate an extraordinary story of Australia’s antiquity, its diversity of life, its superlative beauty, and the evolution of Australia’s unique eucalypt vegetation and its associated flora and fauna.
The Greater Blue Mountains is comprised of eight protected areas: the Blue Mountains, Wollemi, Yengo, Nattai, Kanangra-Boyd, Gardens of Stone and Thirlmere Lakes National Parks, and the Jenolan Karst Conservation Reserve.
The deeply incised sandstone plateau rises from less than 100 metres above sea level to about 1300 metres at the highest point, with basalt outcrops on the higher peaks and ridges. This plateau is thought to have enabled the survival of a rich diversity of plant and animal life by providing a refuge from climatic changes during recent geological history. It is particularly noted for its wide representation of eucalypt communities exhibiting the range of structural adaptations of the eucalypts to Australian environments, from tall wet sclerophyll forests to stunted mallee shrublands. One hundred and one species of eucalypts (over 14 per cent of the global total) occur in the Greater Blue Mountains, which has been described as a natural laboratory for studying the evolution of eucalypts.
The area also contains ancient, relict species of global significance. The most famous of these is the recently-discovered Wollemi pine, one of the world’s rarest plant species, a ‘living fossil’ dating back to the age of the dinosaurs. Thought to have been extinct for millions of years, the few surviving trees of this ancient species are located in remote, inaccessible gorges. 
More than 400 different kinds of animals live in the area, including threatened or rare species of conservation significance, such as the spotted-tailed quoll, the yellow-bellied glider, the long-nosed potoroo, the green and golden bell frog and the Blue Mountains water skink. Flora and fauna of conservation significance and their habitats are a major heritage value of the area.
The area is extensively used for sight-seeing, bushwalking, rock climbing, canyoning and other outdoor recreational pursuits.
National Heritage List: 21 May 2007
World Heritage List: 2000

Heard and McDonald Islands
Australian Territory
Heard and McDonald Islands are located in the Southern Ocean about 1500 kilometres north of Antarctica and over 4000 kilometres south-west of Australia. 
The islands are in a remote and stormy part of the globe near the meeting-point of Antarctic and temperate ocean waters. They were unknown to humanity until the 19th century.
The islands were formed by plume volcanism, a process that is poorly understood and that allows an extraordinary view into the earth’s deep interior. They are the only sub-Antarctic islands that are volcanically active. The last recorded major eruption of Big Ben, which dominates Heard Island and at 2745 metres is Australia’s highest mountain, was in 1992. However, continuous activity is evident from minor steam and smoke emissions. 
Permanent snow and ice cover 70 per cent of Heard Island. Its steepness, combined with significant snow fall at high altitudes, makes its glaciers relatively fast-flowing—about 250 metres a year. As a result, the ice and snow in the glaciers have a relatively short turnover period of about 100 years, and the glaciers respond quickly to changes in climate by advancing or retreating. The driving westerly winds create unique weather patterns when they encounter the enormous bulk of Big Ben, including spectacular cloud formations around the summit and rapid changes in winds, cloud cover and precipitation.
McDonald Island lies 44 kilometres west of Heard Island and rises to about 230 metres. Satellite images taken in 2004 provide evidence of significant volcanic activity over the last decade. During this time the island has increased in size from 1km2 to 2.5km2. The previously separate Flat Island and McDonald Island are now joined by a low-lying isthmus. 
Heard and McDonald Islands is the only sub-Antarctic island group believed to contain no known species directly introduced by humans. It has, within one site, an intact set of interrelated ecosystems—terrestrial, freshwater and marine—in which the ongoing evolution of plants and animals occurs in a natural state. This is invaluable for research.
The islands support a range of seabirds—including the world’s largest macaroni penguin colony—and provide an excellent location for investigating the effects of geographic isolation and climate on the evolution of species. Active speciation is clearly present. For example, the beetle populations on the Heard and McDonald Islands group show unique evolutionary adaptations to the environment.
The seal and penguin populations provide excellent opportunities to monitor the health and stability of the Southern Ocean ecosystem. The islands are one of the best sites in the world to study the ecological and biological processes of recolonisation of the Antarctic fur seal and king penguin populations, and the leopard seal’s role in the sub-Antarctic ecosystem.
National Heritage List: 21 May 2007
World Heritage List: 1997

Kakadu National Park
Northern Territory 
Kakadu is a living cultural landscape, inhabited continuously by its Aboriginal traditional owners for more than 50 000 years.
Located in Australia’s tropical north 130 kilometres east of Darwin, Kakadu National Park covers a vast 19 804km2.
The park stretches from mangrove-fringed tidal plains on the Arafura Sea, through the rugged sandstone cliffs of the Arnhem Land escarpment to the stone country in the south. It protects almost the entire catchment of a large tropical river, another three river systems and examples of most of Australia’s Top End habitats.
Kakadu’s ancient escarpment and stone country spans more than two billion years of geological history, whereas the floodplains are recent, dynamic environments, shaped by changing sea levels and big floods every wet season. 
This is a place of enormous biodiversity. Savannah woodlands, eucalypt and monsoon forests, rivers and billabongs, coastal beaches, mudflats and mangroves are home to a range of rare and endemic plants and animals. 
There are 68 mammal species (nearly one-fifth of Australia’s land mammals), 292 species of birds (more than one-third of Australian bird species), 135 reptiles, 26 amphibians, 320 fish, more than 2000 plant species and more than 10 000 species of insects.
Kakadu undergoes dramatic seasonal changes. Wet season rains create a shallow freshwater sea for hundreds of square kilometres, and saltwater crocodiles move swiftly upstream. As the floodplains start to dry, vast numbers of ducks, geese and wading birds flock to the rivers and billabongs. These extensive wetlands are listed under the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (the Ramsar Convention). 
The traditional owners, known as Bininj/Mungguy, have a deep spiritual attachment to the land, dating back to the creation time when ancestral beings known as Nayahunggi journeyed across the landscape. 
Ancestors such as the Rainbow Serpent created the landforms, plants, animals and Aboriginal people we see today. They left language, ceremonies, kinship, and rules to live by. The cultural obligations and responsibility for country handed down by the ancestors are still central to the lives of Bininj/Mungguy and age-old skills such as patch burning are integral to the modern management of the park.
Cave paintings, rock carvings and archaeological sites document the creation stories and Bininj-Mungguy way of life and have one of the longest historical records of any group of people in the world. Some 5000 art sites have been recorded and a further 10 000 sites are thought to exist.
Concentrated along the escarpment, in gorges, and on rock outliers, the art sites display a range of styles including naturalistic paintings of animals and traditional x-ray art. Some galleries intriguingly capture the first contacts with non-Aboriginal people, from the Macassans in the 17th century to the early European explorers in the 19th century.
National Heritage List: 21 May 2007
World Heritage List: 1981 (Stage 2, 1987; Stage 3, 1992)

Lord Howe Island Group
New South Wales
Of volcanic origin, the Lord Howe Island Group has an exceptional diversity of spectacular and scenic landscapes within a small area.
The sheer slopes of its volcanic mountains and the dramatic rock formation of Ball’s Pyramid rise out of an underwater world that is one of the most beautiful in the world. 
The isolation of this special place at the junction of tropical and temperate latitudes has led to tremendous biodiversity. The Lord Howe Island Group is one of the major breeding sites for seabirds in the south-west Pacific.     
Located 700 kilometres north-east of Sydney and covering an area of 1463km2, the Lord Howe Island Group comprises Lord Howe Island, Admiralty Islands, Mutton Bird Islands, Ball’s Pyramid, and associated coral reefs and marine environments.
Nearly seven million years ago geologic movement of the Lord Howe Rise (an underwater plateau) gave birth to a large shield volcano on its western edge. Over time the sea eroded 90 per cent of the original volcano, leaving the islands that today comprise the Lord Howe Island Group.
Lord Howe Island has a spectacular landscape with the volcanic mountains of Mt Gower (875 metres) and Mt Lidgbird (777 metres) towering above the sea. The central low-lying area provides a marked contrast to the adjacent mountains and northern hills. 
There are 241 different species of native plants, of which 105 are endemic to Lord Howe Island. Most of the island is dominated by rainforests and palm forest. 
The islands support extensive colonies of nesting seabirds and at least 168 bird species have been recorded either living on, or visiting, the islands. A number of these are rare or endangered. 
The endangered Lord Howe woodhen is one of the world’s rarest bird species. During the 20th century the population of woodhens experienced a significant decline in numbers as a result of hunting by humans, habitat loss and disturbance by feral animals. A successful captive breeding program and other conservation measures have now increased the numbers of these small flightless birds to around 220.
The islands are one of only two known breeding areas for the providence petrel and contain what is probably the largest breeding concentration in the world of the red-tailed tropicbird, and the most southerly breeding colony of the masked booby. 
The waters surrounding Lord Howe Island provide an unusual mixture of temperate and tropical organisms. The reef is the southern-most coral reef in the world and provides a rare example of the transition between coral and algal reefs. 
National Heritage List: 21 May 2007
World Heritage List: 1982

Macquarie Island
Tasmania 
Macquarie Island is a sub-Antarctic Island of unique natural diversity, a site of major geological significance and one of the truly remarkable places on earth.
Macquarie Island’s beauty lies in its remote and windswept landscape of steep escarpments, lakes, dramatic changes in vegetation, and the vast congregations of wildlife around its dark, dramatic shores.
Situated about 1500km south-south-east of Tasmania, Macquarie Island is half way between Tasmania and Antarctica at around 55 degrees south. The main island is approximately 34 kilometres long and 5.5 kilometres wide at its broadest point.
The island provides evidence of the rock types found at great depths in the earth’s crust and of plate tectonics and continental drift; the geological processes that have dominated the earth’s surface for many millions of years. It is the only island in the world composed entirely of oceanic crust and rocks from the mantle, deep below the earth’s surface—a unique example of active seafloor spreading.
Macquarie Island probably began as a spreading ridge under the sea with the formation of new oceanic crust somewhere between 11 and 30 million years ago.
At some stage the spreading halted and the crust began to compress, squeezing rocks from deep within the mantle. As the ridge grew it eventually became exposed above the ocean’s surface about 600 000 years ago. 
Since Macquarie Island emerged, it has mainly been carved by marine processes such as wave action, unlike other sub-antarctic islands, which have been shaped by glaciers. 
Around the shoreline there is a coastal terrace formed from a wave-cut platform now raised above sea level. Vast waterlogged areas on the coastal platform are heavily vegetated, forming a mire based on deep peat beds, known locally as ‘featherbed’. Old sea stacks testify to the continual uplifting of the island as they protrude through the peat beds, some of them now being several hundred metres from the existing coastline.
Behind the coastal terrace, steep escarpments rise more than 200 metres to the undulating central plateau, which is dotted with innumerable lakes, tarns and pools. The relentless pounding of the Southern Ocean has cut a myriad of rugged bays and coves, fringed with sea stacks and reefs along the western coast.
Among the most aesthetically appealing sights of the island are the vast congregations of wildlife, particularly penguins. The breeding population of royal penguins on Macquarie Island is estimated at over 850 000 pairs—one of the greatest concentrations of sea birds in the world.
Four species of albatross nest on steep and rugged cliffs, both on the main island and on nearby Bishop and Clerk Islands. These are majestic birds, easily viewed when nesting. 
Elephant seals also form impressive colonies on suitable beaches during the breeding season. These animals can grow to over 4.5 metres in length and to a weight of 3.5 tonnes.
National Heritage List: 21 May 2007
World Heritage List: 1997

Purnululu National Park
Western Australia
Purnululu National Park, around 2400km2 in size, is located in the remote East Kimberley region of Western Australia. The park is 300 kilometres south of the East Kimberley’s regional centre, Kununurra. 
It lies in a transition zone between the arid desert environments of central Australia to the south and, to the north, the monsoon savannah environments of northern Australia.
The park is famous for its 450km2 Bungle Bungle Range. One of the world’s outstanding examples of what has been termed ‘cone karst’, the range has been formed by a complex interaction between geological, biological, erosional and climatic features.
Purnululu’s diversity of landforms, along with its location in a transitional climatic zone, supports a range of distinct vegetation communities, ranging from desert shrubs along the exposed plateaus of the Bungle Bungle Range, to the rainforest communities along Osmond Creek valley.
The Bungle Bungle Range comprises a myriad of dramatically sculptured conical ‘beehive’ towers formed from sandstone. These towers undergo remarkable seasonal variation in appearance, including striking colour changes after rain. The intricate maze of the beehive features is accentuated by narrow, sheer-sided gorges lined with Livistona fan palms and other vegetation. The cliffs are sculpted by seasonal waterfalls and pools.       
Twenty million years of weathering have produced the range’s sandstone towers and banded beehive structures. Dark bands, formed by cyanobacteria, winding horizontally around the domes, contrast with the lighter orange sandstone. Cyanobacteria are single-celled organisms that represent some of the oldest life-forms on earth. These organisms have been found as fossils elsewhere in Western Australia in rocks that are believed to be up to 3500 million years old.
The cyanobacterial bands are up to several metres wide, yet only a few millimetres thick. These crusts help stabilise and protect the ancient and fragile sandstone towers. 
While sandstone towers and cliffs are found in from other parts of the world, including in other parts of Australia, the spectacular features of the Bungle Bungle Range are unrivalled in their scale, extent, grandeur and diversity of forms.
The park’s domes, gorges and wet season waterfalls were almost unknown to the world outside the East Kimberley until 1982 when aerial pictures of these amazing formations were released internationally. 
National Heritage List: 21 May 2007
World Heritage List: 2003

Shark Bay
Western Australia  
Shark Bay is located on the most western point of the coast of Australia and covers 23 000km2. The area represents a meeting point of three major climatic regions and forms a change-over between two major groups of plant species—the South-West and Eremaean provinces.
A major feature of the region’s flora and fauna is the number of species at the end of their range. Twenty-five per cent (283 species) of the area’s vascular plants are at the limits of their range and over 230 species or 35 per cent of Australia’s bird species have been recorded. 
The Shark Bay region is an area of major zoological importance due to habitats on peninsulas and islands being isolated from the disturbance that has occurred elsewhere. Five threatened mammal species are found on Bernier and Dorre Islands—the boodie or burrowing bettong, the rufous hare wallaby, the banded hare wallaby, the Shark Bay mouse and the western barred bandicoot.
The region supports nearly 100 species of amphibians and reptiles, and is significant for the variety of burrowing species, such as the sandhill frog. Shark Bay is home to three endemic sand swimming skinks, and ten Australian dragon lizard species.
Twelve species of seagrass cover more than 4000 square kilometres of the bay, with the 1030km2 Wooramel Seagrass Bank, being the largest in the world. 
Over the last 5000 years, seagrass has modified the physical, chemical and biological environment as well as the geology. This has led to the development of major marine features such as Faure Sill, a sandbar overlaying sandstone that crosses the eastern gulf of Shark Bay from Peron Peninsula to the mainland. 
The sandbars, along with low rainfall, high evaporation and low tidal flushing, have produced the hypersaline Hamelin Pool and L’haridon Bight. This hypersaline condition is conducive to the growth of cyanobacteria which trap and bind sediment to produce a variety of mats and structures including Stromatolites.
Stromatolites, the oldest form of life on earth, are representative of life-forms which lived some 3500 million years ago. Hamelin Pool contains the most diverse and abundant examples of Stromatolite forms in the world.
Shark Bay is renowned for its marine fauna. The population of about 10 000 dugong is one of the largest in the world, and dolphins abound, particularly at Monkey Mia. Humpback whales use the Bay as a staging post in their migration along the coast. 
Green and loggerhead turtles are found in Shark Bay, with Dirk Hartog Island being a globally significant nesting site for loggerhead turtles.
National Heritage List: 21 May 2007
World Heritage List: 1991

Tasmanian Wilderness
Tasmania
Its unique wildlife, ancient plants, diverse geology, stunning landscapes and rich cultural heritage make the Tasmanian Wilderness of outstanding heritage value to Australia. 
At 13 800km2 (1.38 million hectares) and covering approximately 20 per cent of Tasmania, the Tasmanian Wilderness is one of the three largest temperate wilderness areas in the Southern Hemisphere. Its rugged and spectacular landscapes illustrate a range of glacial processes and contain rocks from almost every geological period, the oldest being about 1100 million years old. The area’s extensive karst systems contain some of the deepest and longest caves in Australia, housing spectacular limestone features and glow worm displays. The tannin-stained waters in the wild rivers, waterfalls and quiet harbours of the Tasmanian Wilderness have given rise to singular ecosystems and aesthetic contrasts.     
The region is recognised as an International Centre for Plant Diversity by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Its highly varied flora is a unique mosaic of open and closed forests, including some of the world’s tallest flowering forests and cool temperate rainforest, through to buttongrass moorland and alpine communities. Many species found in the Tasmanian Wilderness are descended from those once found in Gondwana. These include the stately Nothofagus species (myrtle beech and deciduous beech) and endemic conifers such as Athrotaxis species (King Billy pine, Tasmanian Pencil pine), the long-lived Lagarostrobos (Huon pine) and its relative, Phyllocladus aspleniifolius (Celery-top pine). 
The area’s fauna includes an unusually high proportion of endemic species and relict groups of Gondwanan fauna, including the burrowing freshwater crayfish which is also a keystone species for the buttongrass moorland. The Tasmanian Wilderness is also a stronghold for several animals such as the Tasmanian devil, Tasmanian pademelon, eastern quoll and ground parrot, which are either extinct or threatened on mainland Australia. Fauna endemic to the region include the moss froglet, Pedra Branca skink, Pedder galaxias, Maugean skate and invertebrate groups with a high proportion of species entirely or primarily restricted to the area, such as burrowing freshwater crayfish, mountain shrimps, stoneflies, caddis flies, landhoppers and harvestmen. 
The area’s cultural values relate to Aboriginal occupation. South-west Tasmania contains one of the world’s richest and best preserved records of human occupation from the Ice Age. This exceptionally rich and important collection of late Pleistocene sites dates to between 35 000 and 11 000 years ago. During this time Aboriginal people developed a unique and specialised adaptation based on the hunting of a single animal, the Bennet’s wallaby, which enabled them to live in extremely harsh, dry and cold conditions. It is also thought to be evidence of the most southerly human occupation at that time.
The area is culturally significant to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, which owns and manages part of the area, for its exceptional cultural, emotional and spiritual value. 
National Heritage List: 21 May 2007
World Heritage List: 1982 (updated 1989)

Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park
Northern Territory 
Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park features two of the world’s most spectacular geological formations. It also represents an outstanding example of traditional human land use, and provides a direct association with living traditions and beliefs.
The immense red rock of Uluru and the rock domes of Kata Tjuta dominate a vast sandy plain in central Australia, home to a remarkable variety of rare or threatened plants and animals.
The park covers 1325 square kilometres on the traditional lands of the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara Aboriginal people, locally known as Anangu.
This is an important cultural landscape, where natural features and living things are fundamental to the belief system of one of the oldest human societies in the world.
Anangu see Uluru and Kata Tjuta, their creek lines, waterholes and the surrounding sand country, as the work of their creation ancestors, Tjukuritja. As they travelled the earth, these ancestral beings created all living things and handed down Tjukurpa (the law)—the code of behaviour followed by Anangu today.
Tjukurpa regulates all aspects of Anangu life, from hunting and gathering food, to social relationships and personal identity. It is expressed in verbal stories, through inma (song cycles and associated ritual), art and the landscape itself. 
Anangu learned how to patch burn the country from Tjukurpa, lighting small fires close together in the cool season to leave a mosaic of burned and unburned areas. Today traditional knowledge of fire, water, plants and animals, is a key ecological management tool. 
The huge red sandstone monolith of Uluru is 9.4 kilometres in circumference and more than 340 metres high. The 36 steep-sided domes of Kata Tjuta lie 32 kilometres to the west, covering an area of 35 square kilometres, with the highest 500 metres tall. Kata Tjuta is sacred under Anangu men’s law and detailed knowledge is restricted. 
Spinifex, low shrubs, large desert oaks and mulga woodlands cover the dunes and plains, with large bloodwoods, acacias and native grasses at the base of the rocks. Waterholes and soaks provide restricted habitats for rare and unique plant species. 
More than 150 species of birds and a number of rare mammals are found here, with reptile species in unparalleled numbers. They include the rare giant desert skink and Australia’s largest lizard, the perentie, which can grow to a length of 2.5 metres.
The freehold title to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park was handed back to the traditional owners in 1985. 
National Heritage List: 21 May 2007
World Heritage List: 1987 (Stage 1) and 1994 (Stage 2)

Wet Tropics of Queensland
Queensland
The Wet Tropics is a hotspot for biodiversity. Hundreds of rare and primitive species of plants and animals are found here, including cycads, ferns, the southern cassowary, several species of gliders and possums, the musky rat kangaroo and tree kangaroos. 
This is one of the few places in the world where fringing coral reefs meet rainforest which stretches up the precipitous slopes of the area’s misty mountains.
This breathtaking landscape of crater lakes, spectacular waterfalls and gorges are still cared for by Rainforest Aboriginal people.
The Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area lies between Townsville and Cooktown and covers an area of approximately 8940km2. 
It is a region of spectacular scenery and rugged topography with fast-flowing rivers, deep gorges and numerous waterfalls. One of the largest rainforest areas in Australia centres around the Daintree River valley. 
The Wet Tropics rainforests are the most diverse in Australia. They contain an almost complete record of the major stages in the evolution of plant life on earth. Many of its rainforest species originated when Australia was still part of the ancient continent of Gondwana.
The Wet Tropics has the highest concentration of primitive flowering plant (angiosperm) families on earth. Two of these families are confined to the area. 
The rainforests are important for the conservation of the plant family proteaceae, in particular the nearest relatives of the ancestors of the banksias, grevilleas, and persoonias that form a major part of the Australian flora.
The vegetation of the Wet Tropics is predominantly rainforest, but includes tall, open forest and tall, medium and low woodland. Mangrove forests cover 136km2 and are the most diverse in Australia. The area has the richest concentration of ferns and fern allies in Australia (65 per cent of Australia’s fern species).
The Wet Tropics is home to about 30 per cent of Australia’s marsupial species, 58 per cent of bat species, 29 per cent of frog species, 20 per cent of reptile species, 58 per cent of the butterfly species and 40 per cent of bird species. There are around 85 species of vertebrate animals unique to the area.
The Wet Tropics holds great significance for the local Aboriginal communities. About 18 Rainforest Aboriginal tribal groups occupied the area, and used forest products including several toxic plants that required complex treatment to make them safe to eat. Such intensive use of toxic food plants is not recorded elsewhere.
National Heritage List: 21 May 2007
World Heritage List: 1988

Willandra Lakes Region
New South Wales
A place of stark beauty, the Willandra Lakes Region is unique, showing how climate, wind and water have shaped the landscape over the last two million years.
Human remains found here are crucial to improving our understanding of the human settlement of Australia. The region contains evidence of ongoing human occupation dating back more than 46 000 years.
The Willandra Lakes Region covers 2400km2 of a semi-arid landscape mosaic in the Murray Basin area of far south-western New South Wales. It comprises dried saline lake bed plains vegetated with saltbush communities, fringing sand dunes and woodlands with grassy understoreys. The National Heritage place includes Mungo National Park and areas of adjoining pastoral properties.
The region contains a system of Pleistocene lakes, ranging in area from six to 350km2 that formed over the last two million years. The lakes were full of deep, relatively fresh, water for a period of 30 000 years that came to an end 19 000 years ago. The ancient shorelines are stratified into three major layers of sediments that were deposited at different stages in the lakes’ history. Most are fringed on the eastern shore by a crescent-shaped dune, referred to as a ‘lunette’, that was formed by the prevailing winds.
The vegetation in the region is typical of the semi-arid zone. Though sparse, it supports many species of native fauna and plays an important role in stabilising the landscape and hence maintaining its sediment strata. 
Once a lush environment teaming with water and animal life, the now dry lakes and dunes have yielded well-preserved fossils of more than 55 animal species, including giant mammals. The landscape also provides evidence of adaptation by Aboriginal people to changing climatic conditions.  
Aboriginal people have lived in the Willandra Lakes Region for at least 46 000 years. Excavations in 1968 uncovered the cremated remains of ‘Mungo Lady’ in the Lake Mungo lunette. At 40 000 years old, this is believed to be the oldest site of ritual cremation in the world. In 1974, the remains of an ochre covered male Aboriginal burial (‘Mungo Man’) was found nearby and is also believed to be 40 000 years old. 
In 2003, nearly 460 fossilised human footprints were discovered, the largest collection of its kind in the world. The prints were made in wet clay by children, adolescents and adults 19 000 to 23 000 years ago. The clay, containing calcium carbonate, hardened like concrete, and a layer of clay and sand protected the prints.
During the last Ice Age, when the lakes were full, the Mungo people camped along the lake shore, taking advantage of a wide range of animals for food. They also exploited plant resources, particularly when the lakes began to dry and food was less abundant.
The human history of the region is not restricted just to an ancient episode. Evidence so far points to an extraordinary continuity of occupation over long periods of time. In the top layers of sediments there is abundant evidence of occupation over the last 10 000 years.
National Heritage List: 21 May 2007
World Heritage List: 1981

Dampier Archipelago
Western Australia
The Dampier Archipelago, located about 1550 kilometres north of Perth, is home to one of the most extraordinary collections of rock art in Australia. 
On the magnificent Dampier Archipelago in Western Australia, where the striking red earth of the Burrup Peninsula meets the blue Indian Ocean, rock engravings thought to number in the millions and other significant sites are helping us learn more about our Indigenous heritage.
This is a sacred place and home to Indigenous Australians for tens of thousands of years. Ngarda-Ngarlie people say ancestral beings created the land during the Dreamtime and the spirits of Ngkurr, Bardi and Gardi continue to live in the area. They have left their mark in features like the Marntawarrura, or ‘black hills,’ said to be stained from the blood of the creation beings.
The richness and diversity of the Dampier Archipelago’s Indigenous heritage is remarkable, with sites including quarries, middens, fish traps, rock shelters, ceremonial sites, artefact scatters, grinding patches stone arrangements and engravings. Engravings are the most numerous, potentially numbering in the millions. 
According to the Ngarda-Ngarli people the engravings have a variety of purposes. Some depict ancestral beings or spirit figures, others relate to sacred ceremonies and songs, while many are representations of the everyday life or events of the traditional ancestors.
The engravings show humans, as well as animals such as fish, crabs, turtles, sharks, lizards, goannas, snakes and kangaroos. Some images are so finely detailed that animals can be identified right down to species level. Some show animals no longer found in the area, like emus, and others that are extinct, like the thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger).
There is also a high density of standing stones, complex stone arrangements, fish traps, stone pits, hunting hides and stone cairns in the area. Some of the standing stones are thought to have been built to mark important resources, such as waterholes, soaks and camping areas. Others are thalu sites, where Aboriginal people may have held ceremonies to increase natural species or phenomenon, such as rain.
The rock art of the Dampier Archipelago illustrates the evolution of societies, cultures and the environment over time. The area contains a number of images found in places across the Pilbara which shows connections over vast distances. The deeply weathered ‘archaic faces’ of some engravings yield fascinating insights into long history of connections between the coast and the Western Desert.
The Dampier Archipelago is home to ancient works created by man, as well as a multi-billion dollar resource industry. 
The archipelago is located near significant reserves of natural gas, petroleum and iron ore resources. Industries have already invested in excess of $35 billion in developments, while the Dampier Port is the second largest tonnage port in the country. The area has also created thousands of jobs.
A balance between heritage management and economic prosperity is being achieved through a collaborative partnership involving Indigenous groups, industry, governments and the community. Careful, long-term management of the Dampier Archipelago and Burrup Peninsula will see both our heritage and economy protected into the future, to the advantage of all Australians.
National Heritage List: 3 July 2007

Former High Court of Australia
Victoria
The former High Court of Australia played an important role in Australia’s legal system for more than 50 years. 
It is the place where many landmark legal decisions were made that have defined the nature of Australian democracy and the rights and responsibilities of all Australians. 
Located on Melbourne’s Little Bourke Street, the former High Court operated as the principal registry of the High Court for nearly half a century from 1928 to 1976. It is also associated with the early operation of the Federal Court system from 1977 to 1999.
Federal law was established in Australia in 1901 by an act of the British Parliament, the Constitution of Australia Act 1900, which laid out the structure of governance for the new nation. Amongst other things, it provided for a Federal supreme court that was to be called the ‘High Court’, and which had two major functions: to hear and determine appeals from the highest state courts and to interpret the Constitution.
The Court has had a profound influence on Australia’s political landscape. The Court’s interpretations of the Constitution have, over time, shifted the legislative power in favour of the Commonwealth and fundamentally altered Commonwealth-State relations. It has shaped the legal and political framework that operates in Australia today.
The first sitting of the High Court in Melbourne was on 20 February 1928. RG Menzies KC, a future Australian Prime Minister, appeared for the appellant.
Court Room One was designed to seat the full bench of the Court (the seven justices). Hearings heard there included the 1947 Bank Nationalisation Case, which challenged the then Government’s legislation to create a government monopoly over banking. The High Court ruled that the legislation was invalid. 
Court Room One was also the place where the 1950 judgment was made invalidating Parliament’s attempt to invoke its defence powers to declare the Australian Communist Party an unlawful association. Both decisions were a major blow to the government of the day.
The former High Court building is associated with some of Australia’s most eminent and outstanding jurists. Sir Isaac Isaacs was appointed as a High Court judge in 1906 and remained on the bench for almost 25 years. Appointed as Chief Justice in 1930, he held office for less than a year before he was sworn in as the first Australian-born Governor-General in January 1931. Sir Owen Dixon, Justice of the High Court and Former Justice from 1952 to 1964, has been described as the greatest legal advocate of his time and the ‘Bradman of the judiciary’. 
The building was designed by the first Chief Commonwealth Architect, John Smith Murdoch. It is in the Stripped Classical style, which he also used for the design of the National Heritage listed Old Parliament House in Canberra. The restrained interior detailing is typical of the period and style which is notable for its simplicity and dignity.
National Heritage List: 11 July 2007

Cascades Female Factory
Tasmania
Australia is one of the few places in the world where large numbers of women were sent as convicts. 
Female factories were a unique Australian response to the management of women convicts, and one that reflected 19th century moral and penal philosophies.
Over half of the 25 000 women convicts sent to Australia went to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). The majority of these spent some time at Cascades Female Factory as it was the primary site for the reception and incarceration of women convicts. It is the only female factory with visible fabric and ruins remaining.
Women convicts played a significant role in colonial society as wives, mothers and domestic servants. At first, the authorities considered them to be most useful as their presence was regarded as contributing to social cohesion and stability, particularly as men outnumbered women by 10 to one. 
As the numbers of women convicts grew, the value of their labour was questioned and they were seen as useless and contributing to immorality. The building of female factories was undertaken to manage them. They operated as places of work, of punishment, as hiring depots and places of shelter for women between assignments when they were sick or pregnant.
Built in 1828 outside Hobart and operating until 1856, the Cascades Female Factory became one of Tasmania’s longest running penal institutions. Women were listed in the convict records, given government clothing and sent into a system of punishment, hard work and religious instruction until they were considered suitable for release as domestic servants.
While male convicts were often punished with flogging, 19th century morality precluded such punishment for women. There were small cells in which women were punished in solitary confinement. Additional punishments included shaving or cutting hair, the wearing of heavy iron collars and hard labour.
The Factory was located in an area of damp swamp land which added greatly to the ill health of the women and children admitted to, or born in the factory after its opening. It quickly became notorious for overcrowding, disease and high birth mortality rates. 
By 1838, 208 children had died out of a population of 794. The excessive death rate and appalling living conditions were the subject of numerous inquests and government inquiries. 
After the transportation of convicts to Tasmania ended in 1853, the Cascades Female Factory continued to be used as a prison, and later as a depot for the poor, the insane, 
as a hospital, and for assorted welfare activities. 
The Cascades Female Factory was included in the National Heritage List on 1 August 2007.
The Cascades Female Factory Yard 4 North was included in the National Heritage List on 4 August 2009.

Coal Mines Historic Site
Tasmania
The Coal Mines Historic Site contains the workings of a penal colliery and convict establishment that operated from 1833 to 1848. 
It is associated with British convict transportation to Australia and is one of several probation stations established on the Tasman Peninsula.
The Coal Mines Historic Site demonstrates the economic value of convict labour. It was one of several places established to exploit natural resources and is the only surviving penal coal mine with remaining surface features relating to extracting and transporting coal. It also provides a grim insight into one extreme of convict life in the Australia colonies during the mid-1800s. 
The Coal Mines site was reclassified as a probation station in the early 1840s. The probation system was based on the idea that convicts could make amends and be redeemed for their crimes through systems of controlled labour. Newly arrived convicts were placed in government work gangs for a fixed period, after which they became eligible for a probation pass. The pass entitled them to work for settlers, for wages, with certain restrictions. 
After a period of good behaviour in this capacity, the convict was eligible for a ticket-of-leave and a pardon (conditional or absolute). The system continued, with some modification to 1846, until the cessation of transportation to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) in 1853. The probation system was never tried elsewhere.
The probation system provided punishment and reform through hard labour, religious instruction and education. By 1842–43, 579 convicts had been sent to work at the Coal Mines site in the dark, hot, damp tunnels.
The punishment rate was high. In 1847, 14 000 punishments were meted out to 400 convicts. These included 728 solitary confinements with bread and water and 672 punishments of flogging, sentencing to chains or periods of solitary confinement. The site’s alternating solitary cells are the only remaining example of this form of convict punishment. 
The Coal Mines became a key focus in anti-transportation debates. The dark recesses of the underground workings were believed to be ‘sinkholes of vice and infamy’. When Reverend Henry Phibbs Fry ventured down the mines in 1847, he reported: 
“Having had full evidence of the deeds of darkness perpetrated in the mines, I contemplated the naked figures, faintly perceptible in the gloom, with feelings of horror. Such a scene is not to be forgotten.”
As a result of Reverend Fry’s efforts to control homosexuality and the inefficiency of the mining operation, the Comptroller-General decided to close the mine. On 8 April 1848, an advertisement appeared in the Hobart Town Courier and Gazette seeking private tenders for the lease of the site. The coal mines were then leased to a private operator who used the convict labour assigned to him until as late as 1854.
National Heritage List: 1 August 2007

Darlington Probation Station
Tasmania
Darlington Probation Station, located on Maria Island off the east coast of Tasmania, offers a glimpse into our convict past and the probation system that was unique to Tasmania. 
Darlington initially opened as a penal settlement in 1825 as a place of secondary punishment for convicts who committed offences in the colony. Those who committed more serious crimes were sent to the notorious Macquarie Harbour. The penal settlement was closed in 1832 and the prisoners moved to the recently established prison at Port Arthur and the land was given over to pastoral leases.
Darlington re-opened as a probation station for men in 1842. Along with the Cascades Female Factory in Hobart, it was one of the first of a number of such stations to be established. Some buildings from the original convict period were re-used for the probation station and a major building program was also initiated. 
Implemented as an experiment in 1839 and unique to Tasmania, the probation system was an important shift in the management of convicts in Australia. It was the last major phase of convict management in eastern Australia, and was implemented following the abolition of the highly criticised assignment system.
The philosophy behind a probation station was to use classification, segregation, education, religious instruction and stages of punishment to reform and manage convicts. The system depended on the separation of convicts into three distinct classes and stipulated that the physical layout of the stations had to enforce the principal aims of classification.
In its natural setting and isolated location, Darlington was an ideal choice for a probation station. It was away from free settlements, boasted an abundance of natural resources that could be exploited through convict labour and, as it was an island, was a difficult place from which to escape. Of the 78 probation stations established throughout Tasmania, Darlington remains the most outstanding representative example. 
Darlington operated as probation station for eight of the 13 years the system was in existence, reaching its peak convict population of 492 in 1846. It closed in 1850 after a decision was made to confine all convicts still undergoing probation to the stations on the Tasman Peninsula.
National Heritage List: 1 August 2007

Cockatoo Island
New South Wales
Cockatoo Island is significant as a site that includes the only remaining dry dock in Australia built using convict labour, as well as buildings and fabric related to the administration, incarceration and working conditions of convicts. 
The largest in Sydney Harbour, Cockatoo Island is located at the junction of the Parramatta and Lane Cove rivers. It operated as a convict penal establishment from 1839 to 1869, primarily as a place of secondary punishment for convicts who had re-offended in the colonies. 
Cockatoo Island was regarded as the ideal location for a place of hard labour. It was isolated, easy to provision and secure, but not distant and therefore ‘under the very eye of authority’. Convicts sent to the island were subject to harsh living and working conditions.
The main form of hard labour on the island was quarrying, labouring and construction. Convicts excavated 580 000 cubic feet of rock, creating 45 feet (14 metre) sandstone cliffs, to prepare an area to construct a dock. The Fitzroy Dock was constructed between 1839 and 1847. 
Convicts also constructed impressive underground silos, hand-hewn in rock, to store wheat. The silos were built in response to the severe drought of 1837–39 and were part of a strategy to reduce the colony’s reliance on infrequent grain shipments.
From 1871 to 1888 the prison barracks became an industrial school for girls and a separate reformatory for girls under 16 convicted of a crime. In 1871 the wooden sailing ship, the NSS Vernon, moored at Cockatoo Island, training delinquent, homeless or orphaned boys in seamanship. 
The girls’ reformatory was relocated to Watsons Bay in 1879 and the industrial school for girls closed in early 1888. Overcrowding elsewhere in the colony forced the return of prisoners to Cockatoo Island in June 1888.
Following Federation in 1901, the NSW Government retained management of the island. The male prison section was closed in 1906 and prisoners were transferred to the new Long Bay Gaol. In 1909 female prisoners were also relocated to Long Bay. The boys from the training ship were moved to a boys’ farm at Gosford. 
In 1890 Sutherland Dock was completed using free labour. With closure of the prison, departure of the school ship and increased international shipping, the dockyards and shipbuilding activities expanded rapidly and facilities spread over the whole island.
In 1911 the Royal Australian Navy was formed, and in 1913 the Commonwealth Government purchased Cockatoo Island for the building of major naval vessels as well as for ship repair. Through shipbuilding and servicing, Cockatoo Island played an important role both in the development of the Royal Australian Navy and during both World Wars.
Cockatoo Island operated as a ship-building complex for 134 years between 1857 and 1991. It was Australia’s primary shipbuilding facility for much of this time and contributed significantly to Australia’s naval and maritime history. 
National Heritage List: 1 August 2007

Hyde Park Barracks
New South Wales
Hyde Park Barracks is Australia’s first government-built convict barracks and the only remaining barracks building and complex from the Macquarie era of convict administration. 
Between 1814 and 1820, 11 765 convicts arrived in the colony. By 1820, convicts and ex-convicts represented 94.4 per cent of the male workforce. This presented Governor Lachlan Macquarie with problems regarding control and social stability.
As convicts had to find their own accommodation, there was little chance of controlling them during the hours they were not at work. Macquarie proposed the building of barracks to house male convicts as a way of exerting government control and providing the foundation of their reformation. The increased control was meant to develop habits of industry, while the increased restrictions meant there was less opportunity to commit further crime.
The Barracks was designed to provide basic housing for a labour force of 600 male convicts. The central barracks building was used as a dormitory where men slept in canvas hammocks strung from wooden rails in all 12 rooms. Convicts at the Barracks were on increased rations of food but lost some of the opportunities for private earnings, and were required to work longer hours for the government than previously. 
The building was designed by convict Francis Greenway, who is regarded by many as Australia’s first architect. Hyde Park Barracks is seen as one of his best works, and he was granted an absolute pardon at its opening in recognition of his contribution to the colony.
After 1830, Hyde Park Barracks became a place of secondary punishment and a depot for reassignment and trial. The Office of the Principal Superintendent of Convicts was established on the site, overseeing the changes in convict treatment and work recommended by the Bigge Commission. 
Also at this time, a Court of General Sessions was established at the Barracks to administer punishments for Barracks men and other government employed convicts. Penalties included days in solitary confinement, working in gangs in irons, walking on the treadmill or up to 150 lashes. The court could also extend convicts’ sentences by up to three years with hard labour and transfer men to other penal settlements in the colony or Norfolk Island and Port Arthur. 
The Barracks was finally closed as convict accommodation in 1848, by which time 8000 convicts had passed through. When 200 orphan girls arrived on 6 October 1848 on the Earl Grey, the building started to be used as a reception and labour exchange for ‘unprotected female’ assisted immigrants. The Barracks was especially adapted to accommodate them in the lime-washed brick dormitories. 
From 1887 to 1975, the Barracks was used to accommodate various NSW government departments and is now a museum. 
National Heritage List: 1 August 2007

Kingston and Arthurs Vale Historic Area
Norfolk Island 
The Kingston and Arthurs Vale Historic Area (KAVHA) is of outstanding significance to the nation as a convict settlement spanning the era of transportation to eastern Australia between 1788 and 1855. 
Europeans were not the first people to inhabit Norfolk Island. Stone tools found at both Emily and Slaughter Bays within KAVHA indicate that Polynesian settlement of the area occurred between AD 1200 and AD 1600.
Visited by Captain James Cook RN in 1774, Norfolk Island was settled on 6 March 1788, six weeks after the First Fleet landed in Sydney. A settlement was established at Kingston, with crops sown in the adjoining valley, Arthurs Vale. To relieve the food pressures in the infant colony of New South Wales, Governor Philip relocated around one-third of Sydney’s population to Kingston.
Both convicts and free settlers farmed small holdings of land. The first settlement’s population peaked at 1156 in May 1792. By 1804, the free settlers on the island significantly outnumbered the convicts who represented 23 per cent of the total population of 1084. Abandoned in 1814, the settlement’s buildings were destroyed.
In 1825, the island was re-occupied to provide secondary punishment of convicts. Secondary punishment was designed to revive the fear of transportation and deter crime in Britain and the colonies. It was a sentence applied to transported convicts who re-offended in the colony. 
KAVHA developed a reputation as one of the harshest and cruelest of Australia’s penal settlements. The worst of the convict population from both New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land were sent to Norfolk Island. They were men who had become so brutalised by the system that ever increasing levels of punishment only served to make them more recalcitrant. 
Alexander Maconochie, commandant of Norfolk Island, brought a humanising regime of reform to the second settlement period for four of its 30 years. He introduced the Merits System of Penal Discipline, which worked on the principle that the prisoner could secure freedom if they were industrious and well-behaved. For a number of reasons, including the fact that his superiors disapproved of his reformist actions, his initiatives failed. 
The latter stages of the second settlement saw prisoners arriving direct from Britain to serve the first stage of their punishment under the new probation system introduced in 1843. The severity of the place continued and a critical report to the British Parliament helped bring an end to the island’s use as a penal settlement. It was gradually closed between 1847 and 1855.
After this, the Pitcairn Island descendents of the Bounty mutineers had outgrown their island home, and the British Government chose to resettle them on Norfolk Island. The whole Pitcairn community landed at Kingston Pier on 8 June 1856. 
Their descendents, who today comprise nearly a third of Norfolk Island’s population, still speak the Pitcairn language. 
National Heritage List: 1 August 2007

Old Government House and the 
Government Domain
New South Wales
Old Government House is Australia’s oldest intact former vice-regal residence and was used by 12 governors of New South Wales from 1790 to 1856. 
Together with the parkland setting of the Government Domain, it is of outstanding national significance for its association with the foundation of British colonial administration and as an important centre of the convict system in Australia.
The Old Government House was the first major European building to be erected in mainland Australia. It was a Sydney residence and office for Governor Phillip. Building commenced in May 1788 and the house was completed a year later. 
By 1790, on a small rise called Rose Hill, a settlement of 100 people including 70 convicts had been established. A small country house, later to become Old Government House, was built by convicts for Governor Phillip on the rise above the town. The name of the settlement was changed to Parramatta, with ‘Rose Hill’ retained as the name of the site of the Governor’s country house. 
The appearance of the house today as a more elaborate Georgian complex is largely the result of extensions by the fourth occupants, Governor and Mrs Macquarie. The farming land around the house, some of which had been privately leased, became consolidated as a government owned area, known as the Governor’s domain. This became a major working property, employing up to 90 convicts engaged in quarrying, timber-milling, blacksmithing, farming, dairying and gardening.
Governor Macquarie was replaced in 1821 by Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane, who also used Government House as his primary residence and centre of administration. Brisbane was a passionate astronomer and privately funded and equipped an observatory with two domes. This observatory marks the commencement of scientific endeavour in Australia. As a result of the astronomical observations produced at Parramatta, Brisbane and his two assistants were awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Society in London. 
In 1825 Governor Ralph Darling replaced Brisbane but used Government House in Sydney as his principal residence and Old Government House as a rural retreat. The house began to decline as the colonial treasury restricted funding for maintenance. 
Old Government House was used during the subsequent governorships of Fitzroy and Denison, but with the completion of the new Government House at Bennelong Point in Sydney in 1845, the governors spent less time at Parramatta and in 1856 the house was let to a private tenant.
By 1857 the Domain landscape had been reduced to 246 acres and proclaimed a municipal park by legislation with a park trust established to manage the place. The park assumed a new role for community recreation. 
National Heritage List: 1 August 2007

Old Great North Road
New South Wales
Situated in its natural bushland 
setting, the Old Great North Road 
is an outstanding example of major 
convict-built public infrastructure. 
It demonstrates the harsh, isolated conditions in which convict road gangs lived and worked for months at a time. 
In 1815, the settlement of NSW extended 40 miles around Sydney and along the Hunter River Valley. By 1830 it extended 200 miles. Newcastle had ceased operating as a penal settlement by 1822 and the fertile Hunter Valley was then opened to settlers for farming. In 1826 these settlers petitioned the Governor for a road from Sydney to the Hunter Valley.
The high terrain north of Sydney posed an impenetrable barrier to establishing a land route to the Hunter region. In September 1825, assistant surveyor Heneage Finch completed a survey for a road from the 19 mile post on Windsor Road, north to Wiseman’s Farm on the Hawkesbury River and then to Wollombi Brook. 
This became the 250 kilometre Great North Road.
The Old Great North Road is a particularly challenging and steep 7.5 kilometre section of the Great North Road. It includes traces of the first road, known as Finch’s Line, the later road re-alignment ascending Devine’s Hill, and a stretch of road linking the two. Finch’s Line was a rough 5.2 kilometre road with very tight bends climbing 200 metres to the plateau. Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell inspected the road works and, dissatisfied, set a new 1.8 kilometre line of road up Devine’s Hill. 
Constructed between 1829 and 1832, the Devine’s Hill ascent required the building of massive dry stone retaining walls to support the road on the steep hillsides. Cut and fill operations were employed, requiring blasting and quarrying of huge blocks of sandstone for the retaining walls, some up to 9.5 metres tall. An extensive drainage system carried water runoff. 
The monumental buttressed retaining walls and drainage system on Devine’s Hill demonstrate the ambitious and exacting nature of surveying, engineering, quarrying and masonry work by convict gangs.
The Old Great North Road embodied the latest engineering techniques in road building, but it was rapidly made obsolete by another new application of technology when a reliable steam ship service between Sydney and Newcastle was introduced in 1832.
The Old Great North Road is evidence of the transition of New South Wales from penal colony to permanent settlement, providing necessary infrastructure, transportation and communication for dispersed settlements.
Construction of the road played an important role in the harsh secondary punishment of convicts, designed to deter criminal activity. Road gangs worked for months in isolated conditions with reduced rations and limited shelter. The worst convicts worked in leg irons. 
A collection of features along the road provide rare insight into the lives of the workers in the road gangs. These include the ‘25 Road Party’ engraving, the powder magazine, convict graffiti, and the remains of a stockade where the convicts were housed. 
Today, the Old Great North Road is undisturbed by development, evoking a sense of the past. The road has a long history of community support, and while closed to vehicles, can be walked or cycled.
National Heritage List: 1 August 2007

Wave Hill Walk-Off Route
Northern Territory 
The Wave Hill walk-off route encompasses the sites that led to the Gurindji people becoming the first Aboriginal community to have land returned to them by the Commonwealth Government.  
In 1966, conditions for Indigenous workers and their families on cattle stations around Australia were generally very poor. Special low rates of pay applied to Indigenous workers and Indigenous populations lived on remote cattle stations, under poor conditions and subject to welfare policies.
Wave Hill Station had been owned since 1914 by a conglomerate of cattle companies owned by British peer, Lord Vestey. Indigenous employees had complained for many years about conditions, which included living in tin humpies, no running water and poor quality food. An inquiry during the 1930s was critical of Vestey’s employment practices, but little was done over the decades leading up to the events of 1966.
In March 1966, the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission decided to delay until 1968 the payment of award wages to male Indigenous workers in the cattle industry.
Indigenous pastoral workers on Newcastle Waters Station went on strike in May 1966 in response to this decision but eventually returned to work.
In August 1966, Vincent Lingiari led a group of mostly Gurindji pastoral workers and their families off Wave Hill Station. The group walked along a fence line to Gordy Creek before setting up camp on the Victoria River near the Wave Hill Welfare Station. They camped on higher ground during the wet season and in early 1967 moved to Wattie Creek, where they established the community of Daguragu.
Striking initially for wages and living conditions equal to their non-Indigenous colleagues, the struggle of the Gurindji developed into a rejection of their former dependency and inspired development of a community enterprise on their own land.
The Gurindji received assistance from government officers and material and political support from unions and, in particular, from the author Frank Hardy. Hardy played a key role in the 19 April 1967 petition sent to the Governor-General, requesting the traditional lands be returned to the Gurindji. Eye surgeon Fred Hollows was also a strong supporter of the protest.
On 15 August 1975, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam transferred leasehold title of 3236km2 of land purchased from Wave Hill to the Gurindji. In the ceremony at Daguragu, the transfer was symbolised by Whitlam placing a handful of soil in Vincent Lingiari hands.
In 1976, Vincent Lingiari was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for his services to his people. He died in 1988.
The Gurindji struggled to achieve a way of life that respected their Indigenous identity, their traditions and their rights to their traditional lands. Their example influenced the direction of government policy and legislation following the 1967 referendum, which granted new powers to the Commonwealth Government to make laws for Indigenous people.
The events of the protest have been immortalised in Australia’s popular culture, including the song performed by Paul Kelly From little things big things grow.
“
…That was the story of Vincent Lingiari 
But this is the story of something much more
How power and privilege can not move a people
Who know where they stand and stand in the law
From little things big things grow…”
National Heritage List: 9 August 2007

Point Cook Air Base
Victoria
Point Cook Air Base, south-west of Melbourne, is the oldest surviving military airfield in Australia. As the country’s first military flying school and the birthplace of the Royal Australian Air Force, the air base played a pivotal role in the history of Australian military aviation for more than 90 years.
The Federal Government acquired Point Cook in 1913 to establish the nation’s first military flying school: the Central Flying School. The school began with two officer instructors and a few mechanics. The first military flight in Australia took place on 1 March 1914 and the first training course began in August 1914 with four student pilots.
During the First World War the Australian Flying Corps (AFC) was established at Point Cook. Many of its pilots saw duty overseas in New Guinea, Mesopotamia (Iraq), Palestine and on the Western Front. Lieutenant Frank McNamara, who trained at Point Cook, won Australia’s sole air Victoria Cross.
The base was the setting for many epic aviation events. In 1919 it served as the start-point for the first north-south crossing of the continent; in 1924 the first air circumnavigation of the Australian coastline; and in 1926 the first flight from Australia to the Pacific region. Charles Kingsford-Smith departed from Point Cook in 1929 for the first non-stop, east-west crossing of the continent.
The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) was formed on 31 March 1921 at Point Cook as only the second independent air force in the world. From 1936 the base rapidly expanded as the threat of war loomed. During the Second World War, Point Cook was the core training base for the RAAF and a new Service Flying Training School was established there. By the war’s end more than 2700 pilots had graduated. The air base continued in its role as the key pilot training centre for the RAAF until 1992.
Point Cook is associated with notable people in Australian military aviation. Richard Williams and Thomas White graduated from the first AFC training course in 1914 and served during the First World War. For his role as Chief of Air Staff from 1922 until 1939, Sir Richard Williams became known as the ‘father’ of the RAAF. White was the Minister for Air and Civil Aviation from 1949–51 and was later knighted.
The master plan for Point Cook was completed in 1917 and implemented under JS Murdoch, the first Commonwealth Architect. The layout and buildings today comprise the only example of a military air base exhibiting all major periods of development: pre-First World War, First World War, the inter-war years and the Second World War. The base has the oldest hangars and workshops (1914–17) in Australia and includes the water-plane hangar of 1914, the internationally rare 1916 seaplane jetty and the 1920s seaplane complex.
Today, Point Cook is home to the RAAF Museum. Initiated in 1952 by Air Marshall Sir George Jones, the Museum provides for the restoration and display of historic aircraft. 
National Heritage List: 29 August 2007

Brickendon Estate
Tasmania 
Brickendon Estate in Northern Tasmania is a rare example of a property that has been continuously farmed by generations of the same family since the 1820s. 
The convict-built farm complex, Georgian country house and formal garden are largely intact. Brickendon provides an outstanding record of the experiences of colonial settlers and convicts assigned to rural estates. 
Brickendon Estate is nationally significant for its association with the convict assignment system and continuity of mixed farming practice.
Most convicts transported to Australia were assigned to provide labour to settlers in exchange for food and clothing. Brickendon Estate demonstrates the success of industrious 1820s settlers, the Archer family, and the productivity of convict labour which allowed them to develop the Estate. 
Two branches of the Archer family shared labour between their neighbouring properties Brickendon and Woolmers, which had a combined assigned convict population of more than 100 people. 
Brickendon contains a Georgian country house in its garden setting, extensive boundary hedges and estate buildings including barns, cottages, granaries, a woolshed and stables, chapel, a cart shed, poultry house, cook house, blacksmith’s shop, outhouse, wells, drainage systems and access roads. 
It is unusual for such a diversity of original colonial features to survive within a single property. The range of buildings provides an insight into 19th century British farming practices adapted to Tasmanian conditions. 
It is also rare to find a working estate, including the original 420 hectare property, which has been continuously farmed by one family for six generations. 
Brickendon Estate provides a rich source of information about the living and working conditions of colonial settlers and the convicts assigned to rural estates from the 1820s until transportation to Tasmania ceased in 1853. 
Today, Brickendon Estate and Woolmers Estate are popular tourist destinations. A visit to both National Heritage listed sites tells the compelling Archer family story. 
National Heritage List: 23 November 2007

Woolmers Estate
Tasmania
Woolmers Estate in Tasmania is one of the most intact 19th century Australian homesteads developed in the convict era. 
Established by Thomas Archer around 1817 using assigned convict labour, the Estate stayed in the family until 1994. The buildings and artefacts reveal much about life on this significant property. 
Woolmers Estate is a rare example of a rural property developed using assigned convict labour and remaining in one family for close to 180 years. 
Most convicts transported to Australia were assigned to provide labour to settlers in exchange for food and clothing. Two branches of the Archer family shared labour between their neighbouring properties, Woolmers and Brickendon.
The house at Woolmers illustrates the architectural evolution of a gentleman’s rural residence over time, including modifications made in the 1840s by William Archer, the first architect born in Tasmania. 
The layout and architecture of Woolmers Estate makes a strong distinction between master and servant, which authorities believed to be important in reforming convicts. The grand residence and formal gardens contrast with convict workplaces such as the woolshed, blacksmith’s shop, stables, gardens, coach house and the former convict chapel. 
Woolmers Estate was one of the largest privately owned properties in the Tasmanian colony. The outstanding range of intact buildings, fittings, furnishings and artefacts from every period of the Estate’s history provides a unique record of the scale and range of operations of this large pastoral property during the 19th and 20th centuries. 
The Estate and associated records paint a vivid picture of life at Woolmers over the years. In particular, many of the early 19th century convict farm workers at Woolmers can be identified from surviving musters, farm diaries, correspondence and conduct records.  
Today, Woolmers and Brickendon Estates are popular tourist destinations. A visit to both National Heritage Listed sites tells the complete Archer family story.
National Heritage List: 23 November 2007

High Court–National Gallery Precinct
Australian Capital Territory
The High Court–National Gallery Precinct is significant as a group of public buildings and landscape conceived as a single entity. 
The complex is stylistically integrated in terms of architectural forms and finishes, and as an ensemble of freestanding buildings in a cohesive landscape setting.
The Precinct occupies a 16-hectare site in the north-east corner of the Parliamentary Zone. It includes the High Court, National Gallery of Australia and the Gallery’s Sculpture Garden.
The landscape brief from the National Capital Development Commission required that the High Court, National Gallery and surrounding landscape become a single precinct in visual terms, with the High Court as the dominant element to be open to views from Lake Burley Griffin.
The Precinct is a synthesis of design, aesthetic, social and environment values with a clear Australia identity. This is represented in the pattern of functional columns and towers in the architectural elements, the sculptures of the national collection in a landscaped setting, and the high degree of design and craftsmanship in the complementary internal and external furnishings and fittings of the High Court and National Gallery.
The Precinct is significant in representing the high point in the distinguished career of architect Colin Madigan, who was involved in the project over many years. The design style employed in the Precinct is known as ‘Late Twentieth Century Brutalist’, which is considered a pure interpretation of the modernist architectural style. 
The contract for the design of the National Gallery was won by the architectural firm, Edwards, Madigan Torzillo and Partners, who would also go on to design the High Court. The High Court, designed by Christopher Kringas, was completed in 1980 and the National Gallery, designed by Colin Madigan, was completed in 1982. Both were opened by Queen Elizabeth II and both were awarded the Canberra Medallion by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. 
The 40-metre tall High Court building is essentially one of concrete and glass comprising a number of major functional elements, namely a large public hall, three courtrooms, an administrative wing and Justices’ chambers. A waterfall designed by Robert Woodward and constructed from South Australian speckled granite runs the full length of the entry ramp.
The National Gallery is a complex building of varied levels and spaces arranged on four floors of approximately 23 000 square metres. Like the High Court, much of the building is made of reinforced bush-hammered concrete, an example of the architect’s philosophy that concrete has as much integrity as stone. 
The Precinct was a high point in the career of Harry Howard, who designed  the Sculpture Garden in 1981. This tranquil garden displays monumental sculptures from many countries within outdoor ‘galleries’. Howard was awarded the Gold Medal by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects in 1996.
National Heritage List: 23 November 2007

Bonegilla Migrant Camp – Block 19
Victoria
The place where thousands of post-war migrants began their Australian journey, Bonegilla represents the shift in immigration policy which led to Australia’s multicultural society. 
This rare surviving example of a basic army hut camp provides a strong sense of what migrant life was like. 
Block 19 was part of Australia’s largest and longest operating migrant reception centre. From 1947 to 1971 more than 300 000 people, mainly from Europe, spent time there awaiting allocation to employment, learning English, undergoing health checks and receiving instruction on the Australian way of life. Bonegilla transformed the size and composition of the Australian population. After the Second World War, population growth was considered essential, so the government enabled thousands of non-English speaking Europeans displaced by war to emigrate. This major demographic change transformed Australia’s economy, society and culture. 
A rare surviving example of a post-war migration centre, Block 19 evokes a strong sense of migrant life. The 23 buildings and open setting reflect the basic conditions of former war-time army camps used as migrant centres. The symmetrical grid of timber framed, corrugated iron army huts provided staff and migrant housing, offices, recreation and dining halls, kitchens and toilet blocks. The style of accommodation offered was basic. There were communal dining and washing facilities and purpose-built recreation halls. Native and exotic plants helped to ‘civilise’ the place in later years. 
Bonegilla is the place where many ‘New Australians’ experienced the hope, joys and sorrows of their first home in Australia. Today there are more than 1.5 million descendants of Bonegilla migrants. An important part of Australia’s recent collective memory, Bonegilla offers valued insights into post-war migration and refugee experiences, including Australia’s role as the host nation. 
National Heritage List: 7 December 2007

Bondi Beach
New South Wales
Sydney’s Bondi Beach is one of Australia’s most treasured places. 
The 1.5 kilometre stretch of shore and its buildings have played a major role in the development of our beach culture. The site is also important as the place where the surf lifesaving movement officially began and home of the famous Bondi Icebergs winter swimming club. 
For more than a century, Bondi has been a living symbol of the ‘Aussie Summer’.
Seen as the quintessential Australian beach, it has a special association for many local and international visitors. Because of its popularity and renowned setting, the beach has been celebrated in numerous songs, films and TV shows.
Australia’s first formally documented surf lifesaving club—the Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club—was formed in 1907. The movement has since been adopted across the country and around the world.
With more than 120 000 members, the surf lifesaving movement has grown to become the country’s largest water safety volunteer organisation. It has rescued more than 520 000 people in the 80 years since records were kept.
In 1929 a group of winter swimming enthusiasts formed the Bondi Icebergs. The Icebergs—who must complete a minimum of 75 ‘winter’ swims to be eligible for membership—meet every Sunday from May to September to swim in the chilly waters of Bondi Baths.
The Icebergs have become synonymous with the culture of Bondi and have been likened to the Anzacs with their spirit of mateship and dedication.
Today, Bondi Beach is one of the world’s most famous beaches. It is one of the top three destinations in Sydney, attracting millions of visitors each year.
National Heritage List: 25 January 2008

Mount William Stone Hatchet Quarry
Victoria
Mount William in central Victoria was famous throughout south-eastern Australia as the source of the highly valued greenstone hatchet heads. 
Mount William or Wil-im-ee Moor-ring (Woiwurrung for tomahawk place) hatchet heads were prestigious items traded over much of the region, creating social links and obligations between neighbouring groups.
Around 1500 years ago the Traditional Owners of Mt William, the Wurundjeri, quarried greenstone at Mt William to make hatchet heads for their own use and to trade.
Stone hatchets were an essential part of the Aboriginal toolkit in south-east Australia with at least one stone hatchet in every camp. Hatchets were often attached to a wooden handle and used to cut off sheets of bark for huts or canoes, shape wood into shields, clubs and spears, cut hollows in trees to catch possums and split trunks open to get honey, grubs or insect eggs. 
Wurundjeri dug deep pits to reach the unweathered stone underground, or heated the surface of outcrops (above-ground boulders) to break away pieces of rock. The hard stone was roughly shaped into a hatchet head using a large boulder as an anvil. The traded hatchet heads were then polished and shaped by their new owners by grinding the hatchet against another stone to make a cutting edge.
Mount William is one of the largest and most intensively-worked quarries with hundreds of mining pits and mounds of waste rock surrounding the old work stations where the Wurundjeri made the greenstone hatchets.
In the 1880s William Barak, the prominent Wurundjeri leader explained Mt William’s traditional ownership and access conventions: 
‘There were places… in which the whole tribe had a special interest. Such a place was the “stone quarry” at Mount William… When neighbouring tribes wanted stone for tomahawks they usually sent a messenger for Billibellary [the main custodian]. When they arrived they camped around about the place. Billibellary’s father when he was alive split up the stones and gave it away for presents such as rugs, weapons, ornaments, belts, necklaces’.
Historic records of traditional ownership and control of access to stone resources are rare in Australia, which contributes greatly to the cultural significance of this place.
During the mid-1800s Mt William was recognised as a special site that had been used by Aboriginal people well before European settlement. Throughout the 1900s people from all walks of life were visiting the area to see the quarry firsthand. In 1917 it was described in the Victorian Parliament as: 
‘...the great historic landmark of Australia, furnishing the only indication or proof that we have that this country was inhabited for hundreds of years before the white man came here.’  
– Mr AF Cameron, 
Member of the Victorian Parliament 1917 
National Heritage List: 18 February 2008

Cyprus Hellene Club – Australian Hall
New South Wales
On 26 January 1938, the Day of Mourning was held in the centre of Sydney, in the Australian Hall at the Cyprus Hellene Club. 
It was attended by some of the most prominent Aboriginal leaders of the day including members of the Aboriginal Advancement League and the Aboriginal Progressive Association. The protestors sought full inclusion of Aboriginal people within the Australian nation.
For much of Australia’s history since European settlement, Indigenous people have been treated differently to the general Australian population; denied basic equality with ‘whites’ and rarely given full protection before the law. Indigenous people have long resisted and protested against European settlement of their country. 
The 150th anniversary of the landing of the First Fleet in Australia was a day for some to celebrate and for others a day to mourn. In November 1937, members of the Aboriginal Advancement League and Aboriginal Progressive Association met in Melbourne and agreed to hold a protest conference in Sydney to coincide with Australia Day celebrations in 1938. The choice of holding the Day of Mourning on Australia Day, the national holiday celebrating the arrival of the First Fleet and the birth of Australia, highlighted the exclusion of Aboriginal people from the Australian nation. 
The Day of Mourning was the first occasion in Australia’s history that Aboriginal people from around Australia joined together to campaign for equality and citizenship rights. 
The Day of Mourning was held in a period when there were restrictions on Aboriginal people’s rights of movement and assembly and so delegates from reserves risked imprisonment, expulsion from their homes and loss of their jobs for participating in the event. Even so, more than 100 people attended the Day of Mourning from throughout New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. Telegrams of support for the protest also came from across Australia, which the organisers believed gave the gathering the status and strength of a national action.
The protest was a statement to the government and the people of Australia on this day of celebration of European settlement, but it also had a higher purpose. The Day of Mourning identified a significant collection of policy issues impacting on Indigenous people and proposed recommendations for addressing these issues through government action. While there has been much progress, many of the political statements from the Day of Mourning are still relevant to Indigenous people today.
Indigenous people’s strong association with the site and the events that took place there reflect the outstanding role it played in Australia’s Indigenous political and social history. The site of the Day of Mourning represents Indigenous people’s struggle for the recognition of their civil rights, with the event regarded as one of the most important moments in the history of Indigenous resistance in the early 20th century.
National Heritage List: 20 May 2008

Myall Creek Massacre and Memorial Site
New South Wales
The massacre of approximately 30 Wirrayaraay people at Myall Creek, and the subsequent court cases resulting in the hanging of the seven settlers for their role in the massacre, became a pivotal moment in the development of the relationship between European settlers and Aboriginal people. 
Following the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 a pattern of relations developed between Aboriginal people and European settlers that would last for more than a century. Despite instructions from the British Colonial Office to treat Aboriginal people with goodwill and kindness, competition for land and resources following European expansion inevitably resulted in frontier conflict.
In response to the intensifying conflict, the Colonial Administration ordered settlers to defend themselves and ordered Aboriginal people to stay away from European habitation. Aboriginal people were increasingly viewed as a serious threat to settlers.
The massacre at Myall Creek on the 10 June 1838 was the culmination of a series of conflicts between settlers and Aboriginal people in the Liverpool Plains region. Twelve men, including freed and assigned convicts, had spent a day unsuccessfully pursuing Aboriginal people. They came to Myall Creek station where they discovered a group of Wirrayaraay, whom they rounded up, tied together, led off and massacred. Two days later the men responsible for the massacre returned to the scene of the crime to burn the bodies.
The Myall Creek massacre was marked by a series of unusual circumstances for the time. The massacre was reported to authorities by one of the station hands and the Governor assigned a police magistrate to investigate the reports.
Eleven of the 12 settlers involved in the massacre were charged with the murders but were found not guilty. Seven of the men were re-arrested and tried again, found guilty and sentenced to death. The hanging of the seven European settlers on 18 December 1838 caused controversy throughout the colony.
The Myall Creek massacre was the first and last attempt by the colonial administration to use the law to control frontier conflict between settlers and Aboriginal people. It was the last time that the laws of the colony were applied equally to Aboriginal people and settlers involved in frontier killings.
The descendants of the Wirrayaraay people massacred at Myall Creek, and other Aboriginal people who visit the place, continue to have a strong association with the area. The Memorial Site helps unite descendants of those who were murdered and descendants of those who carried out the massacre in an act of personal reconciliation. Each year several hundred people gather from across Australia to attend the service and commemorate those who were killed.
The bronze Memorial plaque reads:
In memory of the Wirrayaraay people who were murdered on the slopes of this ridge in an unprovoked but premeditated act in the late afternoon of 10 June 1838. Erected on 10 June 2000 by a group of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians in an act of reconciliation, and in acknowledgment of the truth of our shared history. We Remember them (Ngiyani winangay ganunga).
National Heritage List: 7 June 2008

Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout
South Australia

Surveyor Colonel William Light planned and founded the city of Adelaide in only eight weeks. 
His vision was for a metropolitan city surrounded by more than 900 hectares of park lands, with wide streets, several town squares, and the flowing Torrens River separating two major city areas. These lasting elements of his 1837 plan are still in existence today.
Adelaide is the only Australian city to be completely enclosed by park lands and has the most extensive and intact 19th century park lands in Australia. Adelaide Park Lands also has strong links to the Adelaide community as a place for many leisure activities and civic events. Community groups have campaigned for its protection as far back as 1869.
The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout is widely regarded as a masterwork of urban design and signifies a turning point in the settlement of Australia. It was the first place in Australia to be planned and developed, not as a penal settlement or military outpost, but as a place for free settlers. 
The Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout model has been used widely by other towns in Australia and overseas. It is recognised by town planners and historians as a major influence on the Garden City planning movement, one of the most important western urban planning initiatives in history. The picturesque Adelaide Park Lands is important to the identity of South Australia. It is a hallmark of the city’s original design, which has maintained elements of its historical layout for more than 170 years. 
National Heritage List: 7 November 2008

Australian Alps
Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales and Victoria

The spectacular and distinctive Australian Alps contain landforms created by glaciers, remarkable fish fossils and unique cold climate plants and animals. 
The Alps have a strong association with Australia’s pioneering history, while the snowfields and national parks have long been popular recreation areas. The Australian Alps, is made up of 11 national parks and nature reserves. 
The high altitude peaks and plateaus, glacial lakes and alpine and sub-alpine ecosystems of the Australian Alps are rare in our mostly flat, dry and hot continent. Containing the highest peaks in the Great Dividing Range, the Alps are of outstanding landscape value and are important in the pattern of Australia’s natural history. The Kosciuszko Plateau includes the most striking examples on the Australian mainland of landforms created by glaciers. The remarkable Mt Howitt fish fossils demonstrate all life stages from larvae to mature fish. The Alps are home to unique cold climate plants and animals—from wildflowers to snow gums, and from mountain pygmy possums to migratory Bogong moths. Past large scale Aboriginal social gatherings based on moth feasting were unique to the Alps. 
Huts, fences, cattle yards and stock routes reflect over 150 years of summer grazing on the alpine high plains, which began in the 1830s. The distinctive way of life associated with that grazing is significant to our pastoral and pioneering history. Linked to this is Banjo Paterson’s ballad The Man from Snowy River, an epic legend of horsemanship. 
The Alps is the major area in Australia for broad-scale snow recreation. Snow sports began in the 1860s and activities expanded during the 20th century. 
With significant natural catchments, the Alps have contributed to the nation’s social and economic development through the use of alpine waters for irrigation, to generate electricity and as a partial source for domestic water supplies for Melbourne and Canberra. 
There is a long history of scientific research and endeavour in the Alps too. For example, in the mid-1800s Baron Ferdinand von Mueller gathered extensive botanical alpine collections and Alfred William Howitt documented the area’s geology, botany and Aboriginal societies. More recently, in 1969, the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station played a major role in the Apollo 11 moon landing mission. 
National Heritage List: 7 November 2008

QANTAS Hangar – Longreach
Queensland 

A key site in Australia’s early aviation history, the unassuming galvanised iron hangar at Longreach is where QANTAS began operating in 1922. 
It is closely associated with Hudson Fysh, Paul J McGinness, Fergus McMaster and Arthur Baird. No other place holds such strong associations with the first seminal decade of QANTAS. The hangar also has strong links to the start of the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia. 
In 1919, two First World War airmen, Hudson Fysh and Paul J McGinness, surveyed an air route from Longreach to Darwin for the first England–Australia Air Race. As they travelled the black soil plains between remote communities unconnected by rail, they realised the potential for an air service for mail, freight and passengers.
With funds from local graziers including Fergus McMaster, they established the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd (QANTAS) in 1920. QANTAS began operating in 1922 from the hangar at Longreach with two small planes. From these humble beginnings, the ‘flying kangaroo’ grew to a successful international airline. 
The QANTAS Hangar is closely associated with the work of Fysh, McGinness and McMaster who were central to the company’s formation, and Arthur Baird whose engineering skills kept QANTAS airborne. Baird was an innovator, fitting larger radiators and header tanks to aircraft to counter extreme Queensland heat.
The hangar is also important for its association with the start of the Aerial Medical Service (flying doctors) in 1928. QANTAS supplied the first planes and provided logistical support from the Longreach hangar. The Aerial Medical Service grew to become the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia. The site also has strong links to the founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the Reverend John Flynn, known as ‘Flynn of the Inland’. After discussions with Fysh and McGinness, Reverend Flynn realised his long held vision of a network of flying doctors when QANTAS provided the first aircraft for the service from the Longreach hangar.
Today the Royal Flying Doctor Service operates more than 20 bases in Australia with a fleet of more than 50 fully instrumental aircraft.
National Heritage List: 2 May 2009

Elizabeth Springs
Queensland
Australia is home to the largest artesian system in the world. The Great Artesian Basin, which covers more than 20 per cent of the Australian continent, has around 600 artesian spring complexes in 12 major groups. 
Artesian springs are the natural outlets of the extensive artesian aquifer from which the groundwater of the basin flows to the surface. Springs can range in size from only a few metres across to large clusters of freshwater pools known as ‘supergroups’. Elizabeth Springs forms part of the Springvale supergroup of springs that, with the exception of Elizabeth Springs, are largely extinct. The Elizabeth Springs complex extends over an area of approximately 400 by 500 metres. 
Elizabeth Springs is situated approximately 300 kilometres south-south-east of Mt Isa in western Queensland. It is a complex of ‘mound’ springs, which means the groundwater flow deposits calcium and other salts from the mineral-rich waters. These deposits, combined with wind-blown sand, mud and accumulated plant debris, settle around the spring outflow forming mounds that resemble small volcanos. 
Great Artesian Basin groundwater movement rates are slow; between one to five metres per year. As a result some water in the centre of the basin, on the South Australian and Queensland border, is more than one million years old. Dating techniques that measure groundwater flow reveal that Great Artesian Basin springs are predominately recharged by rainfall on the Great Dividing Range on the eastern margin of the basin—where the basin’s aquifer outcrops—allowing water to percolate into the vast groundwater system. 
Great Artesian Basin springs have been significant in providing reliable water and habitat as the Australian continent progressively dried out over the last 1.8 million years. Elizabeth Springs is a significant refuge for a number of plants and animals that, due to the springs’ isolation, have evolved into distinct species not found anywhere else in the world, including a freshwater hydrobiid snail and the threatened Elizabeth Springs goby. 
National Heritage List: 4 August 2009

Witjira-Dalhousie Springs
south Australia

Australia is home to the largest artesian system in the world. The Great Artesian Basin, which covers more than 20 per cent of the Australian continent, has around 600 artesian spring complexes in 12 major groups. 
Artesian springs are the natural outlets of the extensive aquifer from which the groundwater of the basin flows to the surface. Springs can range in size from only a few metres across to large clusters of freshwater pools known as ‘supergroups’. Witjira-Dalhousie Springs is a supergroup that contains around 60 springs, extending over an area of more than 50 000 hectares.
Situated about 250 kilometres south-east of Alice Springs, Witjira-Dalhousie is the most northerly group of springs in South Australia. It is a complex of ‘mound’ springs, which means the groundwater flow deposits calcium and other salts from the mineral-rich waters. These deposits, combined with wind-blown sand, mud and accumulated plant debris, settle around the spring outflow forming mounds that resemble small volcanos. 
Great Artesian Basin groundwater movement rates are slow, between one to five metres per year. As a result some water in the centre of the basin is more that one million years old. Dating techniques that measure groundwater flow reveal that the Witjira-Dalhousie Springs appears to be recharged by thousands of years old water that has percolated down through the beds of the Finke River—and adjacent arid zone rivers—where they overlie outcrops of the Great Artesian Basin aquifer. As a geological feature the Witjira-Dalhousie Springs complex is unique in Australia.  It illustrates on a huge scale an artesian spring’s system, with faults, impermeable confining beds, aquifer outcrops, mound spring deposits, and the large pools and rivulets of artesian water.
Great Artesian Basin springs have been significant in providing reliable water and habitat as the Australian continent progressively dried out over the last 1.8 million years.  As the only permanent source of water for 150 kilometres, Witjira-Dalhousie provides a significant refuge for a number of plants and animals. Due to the springs’ isolation many of these plants and animals have evolved into distinct species not found anywhere else in the world.  
Witjira-Dalhousie Springs is an integral part of Aboriginal tradition and life in northern South Australia. It is a place that is associated with many traditional stories and songs. Evidence of the spring’s significance to Aboriginal people can be seen in the large camp sites found at the springs—some are thousands of square metres in size—and the vast number of stone artefacts found scattered around the area.
National Heritage List: 4 August 2009

Porongurup National Park
Western Australia 

Porongurup National Park has one of the richest varieties of plants in Australia with more than 700 native species within the park’s 2621 hectares. 
With its diverse wildlife, tall karri and open jarrah forests, and massive granite domes, the park is a haven for birdwatchers, photographers and wildflower enthusiasts who are drawn by the sheer beauty of this place.
Porongurup National Park is also significant for a number of invertebrates that have a link to the Gondwanan supercontinent, when Australia was joined to present day Africa, South America and Antarctica, before they broke apart some 150 million years ago. Isolated several times by higher sea levels, most recently around 55 million years ago, the cool mountain gullies within Porongurup National Park serve as a haven for insects, primitive spiders and land snails. Many of the relict species in the Porongurup Range, and in neighboring Stirling Range, are more closely related to invertebrate species found in mountainous areas of eastern Australia or on other Gondwanan continents such as South Africa, than to the drier, low-lying areas surrounding the range.
Porongurup National Park, within the traditional lands of the Minang group of the Nyungar people, is a unique living landscape of exceptional biological and ecological significance. As part of an internationally recognised ‘biodiversity hotspot’ in the south-west region of Western Australia, Porongurup National Park contains an exceptionally high concentration of plants and animals in a relatively small area. Examples of plant groups which contribute to this outstanding richness include: flame-peas (Chorizema), rice flowers (Pimelea), native myrtles (Myrtaceae), kangaroo paws (Haemodorales) and banksias (Proteales).
National Heritage List: 4 August 2009

Cheetup rock shelter
Western Australia

Cheetup rock shelter is a spacious shelter formed within the summit of a striking triangular-shaped granite dome in Cape Le Grand National Park, east of Esperance in Western Australia. 
Archaeological excavations have shown that Aboriginal people occupied Cheetup (meaning “place of the birds”) for thousands of years. Aboriginal people associated with the place today identify themselves as Nyungar/Noongar, Ngadju or Mirning.
The rock shelter commands spectacular views over the national park, with vistas to the rocky headlands and white sand beach of the coast and the Southern Ocean beyond. The sandy soil of the hill slopes support plants such as banksias, grevilleas, hakeas, melaleucas and eucalypts as well as clusters of the cycad Macrozamia riedlei.
Cycad seeds were an important traditional food resource for Aboriginal people in many parts of Australia. The seeds have high nutritional value but contain toxins that can cause vomiting, liver damage, convulsions and even death. Aboriginal people were able to use the seed for food because they had discovered ways of processing the seeds to remove the toxins. This was done by a variety of methods, including leaching in water, fermentation, roasting and aging.
Early European visitors finding cycad seeds and husks at Aboriginal camps recognised that Aboriginal people used them for food but did not realise that the seeds had first to be processed to remove their toxins. Members of the Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh’s crew became ill after consuming the seeds when visiting the Swan River in 1697 and some of the Endeavour’s crew became violently ill from eating cycad seeds during James Cook’s explorations of the east coast of Australia. During Matthew Flinders’ circumnavigation of Australia in 1802, his men fell ill from eating unprocessed Macrozamia seeds obtained while anchored at Lucky Bay, a sheltered cove not far from Cheetup rock shelter.
In 1841, explorer George Gray described a method used in south-west Western Australia to remove toxins from cycad seeds:
“…having placed them in some shallow pool of water, they leave them to soak for several days…they dig in a dry sandy place, holes…line them with rushes and fill them up with the nuts over which they sprinkle a little sand, and then cover the holes nicely over with the tops of the grass trees.”
The archaeological excavations in Cheetup uncovered a similar pit, lined with grass tree leaf bases and containing cycad seeds. Radio-carbon dating of charcoal in the overlying deposit showed that this pit was more than 13 000 years old. Before this evidence of ancient processing of cycads at Cheetup was revealed, archaeological evidence of the use of cycad seeds for food had been dated only to 4300 ago and it was thought that techniques for removing toxins from the seeds had been introduced into Australia from elsewhere, and only in the last 5000 years.
Cheetup rock shelter is important in the course of Australia’s cultural history because it demonstrates the antiquity of cycad processing to make the toxic seeds fit for human consumption. The evidence from Cheetup rock shelter shows us that Aboriginal people had developed methods to utilise this valuable but dangerous food more than 13 000 years ago, during the last Ice Age. 
National Heritage List: 23 October 2009

Protecting Australia’s National Heritage
The Australian Heritage Council
The Australian Heritage Council is an independent body of heritage experts established through the Australian Heritage Council Act 2003.
The Council’s role is to assess the values of places nominated for the National Heritage List and the Commonwealth Heritage List, and to advise the Australian Government Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts on conserving and protecting places included, or being considered for inclusion, in the National Heritage List and Commonwealth Heritage List. The Council’s functions include the identification, assessment and promotion of heritage and to advise the Minister on a range of matters relating to heritage. It also engages in research and monitoring activities.
The National Heritage List helps protect our 
special places
When a place is included in the National Heritage List it is officially recognised as an outstanding part of our heritage. These places also add value to local communities by attracting visitors who are eager to learn more about Australia and Australians. It is the National Heritage values of a place that determine if a place is to be included in the National Heritage List and it is these values, and not necessarily the entire place itself, that are protected through listing. The values are protected by the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act).
This means that a person cannot take an action that has, will have, or is likely to have, a significant impact on the National Heritage values of a listed place without the approval of the Minister. It is a criminal offence to breach this legislation.
The Australian Government assists state and territory governments to protect places with National Heritage values under state and territory legislation and private owners through conservation agreements. 
Choosing the places
Only places with outstanding natural, historic and Indigenous heritage values that contribute to Australia’s national story are added to the National Heritage List.
Anyone can nominate a place to the National Heritage List.
The Australian Heritage Council assesses, against the relevant criteria, whether or not a nominated place has heritage values and makes a recommendation to the Minister on that basis. In making its assessment, the Council must only consider whether the place has outstanding heritage value to our nation.
The Council must publish a notice inviting comments from the public in relation to a proposed listing. The Minister makes the final decision on listing.
Nominations must set out the qualities or values of the place that make it significant to the nation and must meet one or more of the National Heritage criteria. 
The Minister may also call for nominations against selected themes which he or she will announce.
Grants and funding
Communities that have National Heritage List places can benefit from promotional activities and increasing numbers of visitors. Site managers may also apply for funding and grants available from the Australian Government.
Between 2005–06 and 2008–09, $10.5 million was provided for financial incentives to restore and conserve Australia’s most important historic heritage under the National Heritage Investment Initiative.  
Between 2009–10, $60 million was provided for heritage projects under the Australian Government’s Jobs Fund initiative. Projects receiving funding included those related to World and National Heritage-listed places, National Trust properties and community projects, both large and small, around the country.
The Government has also announced a $5 million annual program to conserve and protect Australia’s nationally important historic heritage sites due to start in 2010–11, and a $100,000 per year program to commemorate eminent Australians beginning in 2009–10.  
Application information can be found at 
www.heritage.gov.au or by contacting the Community Information Unit via email ciu@environment.gov.au or phone 1800 803 772.
Australia’s heritage lists
Throughout Australia there are places with varying degrees of heritage significance, which are included in a number of lists or registers of natural and cultural heritage places. These are not necessarily comprehensive lists of heritage places, but lists of the places that have been identified and recorded up to the present time.
The World Heritage List contains places that are important to all the peoples of the world in that they possess outstanding universal values above and beyond the values they hold for a particular nation. Australia currently has 17 properties on the World Heritage List.
The National Heritage List is Australia’s list of places with outstanding heritage value to our nation. A place may be listed for its natural, Indigenous or historic values, or any combination of the three.
The Commonwealth Heritage List includes places owned or controlled by the Australian Government that have natural, Indigenous or historic values, or any combination of the three, with significance to Australia, such as lighthouses, memorials, customs houses, and marine parks.
The Register of the National Estate is a list maintained by the Australian Heritage Council of important natural, Indigenous and historic places throughout Australia.
State and territory heritage lists are statutory lists or registers of heritage places that are maintained by the States and territories and have particular importance to the people of a particular state or territory.
Local government lists are heritage registers or lists often attached to the local or municipal planning scheme prepared by local government authorities.
The National Trust list is maintained by the National Trust of Australia, a community-based organisation with independently constituted Trusts in each state and territory. 
Indigenous site registers include lists of recorded Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander places which include religious or ‘dreaming’ sites, burial sites, rock art places, traditional camping sites and historic sites such as Aboriginal missions and massacre sites.
Historic shipwrecks register is a register of historic shipwrecks in Australian waters, which is administered by the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
Other lists are kept by some specialist organisations, such as the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and Engineers Australia, who keep lists of important historic places, for example, Art Deco buildings, gardens and bridges.
Further information
This book will be revised as appropriate to include information on the listings. It is available from the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts either by visiting www.heritage.gov.au or by contacting the Community Information Unit by email ciu@environment.gov.au or telephone 1800 803 772.

© Commonwealth of Australia, 2009 
Published by the Australian Government 
Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts
ISBN: 978-1-921733-02-4
Information in this document may be copied for personal use or published for educational purposes, provided that any extracts are fully acknowledged.
Heritage Division
Australian Government Department of the Environment, 
Water, Heritage and the Arts
GPO Box 787
Canberra ACT 2601 
Australia
Email	ciu@environment.gov.au 
Phone	1800 803 772
Images used throughout are © Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts and associated photographers unless otherwise noted.
Front cover images courtesy: Botanic Gardens Trust, Joe Shemesh, Brickendon Estate, Stuart Cohen, iStockphoto
Back cover: AGAD, GBRMPA, iStockphoto