Queenslands Natural WondersAustralia has 16 world heritage sites. Five are in Queensland, making the state one of the most naturally diverse places on earth. World Heritage sites are those places, which are considered the most outstanding natural and cultural heritage areas of the world. Sites selected for World Heritage are inscribed on the World Heritage List only after carefully assessing whether they represent the best example of cultural and natural heritage on earth. Gondwana Rainforests of Australia Luke's Bluff at O'Reilly's Rainforest Guesthouse Nestled on the Queensland-New South Wales border, in the mountains behind the Gold Coast, the World-Heritage Area ‘Gondwana Rainforests of Australia’ cover the most expansive areas of subtropical rainforests in the world. Rainforest once covered most of the ancient southern super-continent Gondwana and remains the most ancient type of vegetation in Australia. Today, Australia’s rainforests cover only 0.3% of the country, but they contain about half of all Australian plant families and about a third of Australia’s mammal and bird species. The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia feature a concentration of primitive plant families that are directly linked to flowering plants that existed over 100 million years ago. Only very few places on earth contain as many plants and wildlife that are almost identical to their ancient ancestors. This World Heritage Area also includes large areas of warm temperate rainforest and nearly all of the Antarctic beech cool temperate rainforest. Providing habitat for more that 200 rare or threatened plant and animal species, the area has an extremely high conservation value. In the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, you can experience tumbling waterfalls, wildflower heaths, tall open forests, picturesque creeks and varied wildlife. There is no better place to go fauna and flora spotting, hiking or learning about the rich exploration history of the park. The area is readily accessible by road and hundreds of kilometres of walking tracks are provided. There are also cosy mountain retreats – the O’Reilly family established a guesthouse near Lamington National Park in 1926 and founding members of the National Parks Association of Queensland built Binna Burra Lodge next to the park in the 1930s. Camping is also available close by. Queensland National Parks that belong to the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia include Lamington, Springbrook, Mt Barney and Main Range. Fraser Island The island is a place of exceptional beauty, with its long uninterrupted white beaches flanked by strikingly coloured sand cliffs and majestic tall rainforests. The massive sand deposits that make up the island are a continuous record of climatic and sea level changes over the past 700, 000 years. Fraser Island features complex dune systems that are continually evolving, with the highest dunes on the island reaching up to 240 metres above sea level. An array of lakes can be found on the island, exceptional in their number, diversity and age. This includes 40 perched dune lakes, half the number of such lakes in the world. Lake Boomanjin, the largest perched lake in the world, is one of the island’s most picturesque. A surprising 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 at elevations of over 200 metres. Birds are in abundance on the island with over 350 species being recorded. It is a particularly important island for migratory wading birds, which use the area as a resting place during their long flights between Southern Australia and their breeding grounds in Siberia. The dingo population on the island is regarded as the most pure remaining in eastern Australia. Fishing is also very popular. Called K’gari by its Aboriginal inhabitants, the island reveals Aboriginal occupation of at least 5 000 years. The island contains many sites of archaeological, social and spiritual significance. Middens, artefact scatters, fish traps, scarred trees and campsites bear witness to the lives of the original inhabitants. Fraser Island is 45 minutes by air and four hours by car from Brisbane. You can visit the island either by taking a guided tour, as a foot-passenger on a ferry to the western side, or by self-driving. Fraser Island is strictly four-wheel drive territory only. Access requires crossing the Great Sandy Strait either by barge or charter aircraft. Accommodation on the island includes various options from camping to resort style accommodation. The Great Barrier ReefStretching more than 2000km along the Queensland coastline and covering 35 million hectares, the Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef. It is home to an abundance of marine wildlife - including more than 1500 brilliantly coloured species of tropical fish, 4000 species of molluscs, 400 species of sponge and 300 species of hard corals. Extensive seagrass beds provide a home for the dugong, a mammal species internationally listed as endangered. The reef also contains nesting grounds of world significance for the endangered green and loggerhead turtles. It is also a breeding area for humpback whales, which migrate from the Antarctic to the reef to give birth to their young in the warm waters. The reef’s islands and cays support bird species by the hundred, including reef herons, ospreys, frigate birds and sea eagles. The reef is also of cultural importance, containing many archaeological sites of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin. Some notable examples include Lizard and Hinchinbrook Islands with their spectacular galleries of rock paintings. The reef can be accessed from numerous regions in Queensland, including Bundaberg, the southern gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, Gladstone, Capricorn, the Whitsunday Islands, Mackay, Townsville, and Tropical North Queensland. It takes 90 minutes to two hours to reach the outer Great Barrier Reef on water from Queensland’s coastal ports. The many diving and snorkelling opportunities provide visitors with the best way of getting close to the Great Barrier Reef's many wonders. Tour operators offer professional accredited dive courses, introductory reef dives and for the experienced, extended dive charters incorporating night dives or guided ecology dives. If delving into the deep blue is not for you, there are semi-submersible craft, glass bottom boats and a variety of land-based reef attractions. Those wishing to stay overnight on one of the reef’s 600 continental islands can choose camping in a National Parks to luxurious lodges. The Wet Tropics Listed in 1988, the Wet Tropics World Heritage property extends from Townsville to Cooktown on the north-east coast of Queensland and covers almost 900,000ha. The area is a region of spectacular scenery with fast flowing rivers, deep gorges, numerous waterfalls and mountain summits providing expansive rainforest views. The area includes National Parks such as Daintree, Barron Gorge and Wooroonooran National Parks. One of the largest rainforest wilderness areas in Australia centres on the Daintree River Valley. Mossman Gorge is one of the most visited spots in the Wet Tropics. Part of the Daintree National Park, the stunning gorge is the traditional home of the Kuku Yalanji Aboriginal people. Visitors can take a cultural tour and visit the art gallery to learn more about their unique Rainforest Aboriginal culture. The Wet Tropics provides habitat for numerous endemic species of both fauna and flora. Many of the area’s plant species originated when Australia was still part of the continent known as Gondwana, with the Wet Tropics containing the world’s highest concentration of primitive flowering plant families and 64% of Australia’s fern species. There are at least 390 species of plants that can be classified as rare or very restricted and of these, 74 are regarded as threatened. The Wet Tropics are home to a third of Australia’s marsupial species, including the small musky rat kangaroo, which is the most primitive surviving kangaroo species. Aboriginal occupation of the area is believed to date back 50,000 years to the earliest human occupation of Australia. The district was a rich environment for the Aboriginal hunter-gatherers who lived there. About 16 different groups occupied the area, using a wide range of forest products, including several toxic plants that required complex treatment to make them safe to eat. Such intensive use of toxic food plants is rare. The Wet Tropics area continues to hold great significance for the local Aboriginal communities who identify as “rainforest people”. Many different opportunities are provided that allow visitors to experience the Wet Tropics, including luxury accommodation nestled in rainforest; four wheel drive tours; bird and crocodile spotting tours. There are about 150 managed walks , ranging from short, popular boardwalks with visitor facilities to long distance tracks such as the Wet Tropics Riversleigh Fossil FieldsThe Australian Fossil Mammal Sites, Riversleigh and Naracoorte were inscribed in the World Heritage List in 1994 for their outstanding representation of the evolution of Australian mammals and the quality of their fossils, which are preserved in limestone. The Riversleigh section, which covers 10 000 ha, is located in the southern section of Boodjamulla National Park in northwest Queensland. Naracoorte can be found over 2000 km away in South Australia. The Riversleigh fossil deposits are among the richest and most extensive in the world, with some fossils dating back to 15-25 million years. The site provides exceptional examples of mammalian assemblages in a continent whose mammal evolutionary history has been the most isolated and most distinctive in the world. It includes the first records for many groups of living mammals, such as marsupial moles and feather-tailed possums, as well as many other unique and now extinct species such as the “marsupial lion”. The area open to the public was one of the first fossil deposits found, and gives visitors an opportunity to view many fossilised mammals and reptiles first hand. If you think fossils are a dry and dusty subject that only palaeontologists and university professors would be interested in, you should visit the outstanding Riversleigh Fossil Centre.It provides an extensive insight into the region as it was 25 million years ago. Here you will feel yourself virtually transported to a long-gone world, coming face-to-face with the prehistoric inhabitants of Outback Australia. Accommodation is one of the most misspelt words in the English languageaccom, accomadation, accomidation, accomodation, accomodations, accommadation, accommidation, accommodation, accommodations, acomadation, acomidation, acomodation, acommadation, acommidation, acommodation, accomdation, acoomodation |
