Travelers to Australia experience the wide open spaces and natural beauty of the wild landscape in the great outdoors. The landscape includes tropical rain-forests, beaches and sunbaked horizons. While exploring the beautiful vistas of Australia travelers can experience some of the world’s greatest sights.
The United Nations, UNESCO, has long had a list of amazing places in the world, known as the World Heritage List. The World Heritage List is selected by a committee. Currently there are 851 properties world wide, that the committee deems as having outstanding universal value. Each year, the committee selects additions to the list. In 2007 the Sydney Opera House was one of the site added to the World Heritage List. Of the 851 properties on the World Heritage List, 17 of them are in Australia.
Great Barrier Reef, East Coast of the Queensland mainland. The Great Barrier Reef, off the north east coast of Australia, contains the world’s largest collection of coral reefs. The coral reefs have 400 types of coral, 1,500 species of fish and 4,000 types of mollusc. The reef is the habitat of the “sea cow” and the large green turtle, both of which are threatened with extinction.
Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory. Unique archaeological and ethnological reserve,. Cave paintings, rock carvings and archaeological sites record the life of the region’s inhabitants.
Willandra Lakes Region, New South Wales: The fossil remains of a series of prehistoric lakes and sand formations.
Lord Howe Island Group., New South Wales. Isolated oceanic islands, born of volcanic activity form depths of over 2,000 miles under the sea.
Tasmanian Wilderness, State of Tasmania: Glacial Parks and reserves constitute one of the last expanses of temperate rain forest in the world.
Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, States of New South Wales and Queensland: This site, along the Great Escarpment on Australia’s’ East coast features outstanding geological specimen/
Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Northern Territory. National Park with spectacular geological formations, a vast sandy plain an immense monolite and rock domes.
Wet Tropics of Queensland: The area along the north east coast of Australia is made up of tropical rainforest’s.
Shark Bay, Western Australia: Shark Bay, at the western point of the continent, features islands, vast sea grass beds, sea cows and stomatolites (colonies of algae formed into hard, dome shaped deposits).
Frasier Island, State of Queensland: Just off of the east coast of Australia is the largest sand island in the world, with remnants of a tall rainforest on sand.
Australian Fossil Mammal Sites, States of Queensland and South Australia: Riversleigh and Naracoorte are among the world’s great fossil sites.
Heard Island and McDonald Islands: Located in the Southern Ocean the islands are the only volcanically active sub antarctic islands in the world. The islands are rare pristine ecosystems.
Macquarie Island, State of Tasmania: Oceanic island is the Southern Ocean, approximately halfway between Australia and the Antarctic continents. It is significant as the only place on earth where rocks from the earth’s mantle as exposed above sea level.
Greater Blue Mountains Area: The site consists of sandstone plateaus, escarpments and gorges and temperate eucalyptus forest.
Purnululu National Park, Western Australia: The park continues the Bungle Bungle Range, composed of Devonian-age quartz sandstone.
Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens, Melbourne, Victoria: The building and grounds were designed for great international exhibitions of 1880 and 1888. The building is constructed of brick and timber, steel and slate. There are elements of the Byzantine, Romanesque, Lombardic and Italian Renaissance styles.
Sydney Opera House, New South Wales: The Sydney Opera House is listed as one of the great works of the 20th century, noted for it’s form and structural design. The great urban shell shaped sculpture is set at the tip of a peninsula in the Sydney Harbor. the Sydney Opera House is recognized as an great artistic monument.
