Australian World Heritage Sites

Inscribed by the United Nations

Just north of Melbourne city centre along the route of the free City Circle tram lies the Royal Exhibition Building in its Carlton Gardens setting. The building and its gardens were inscribed in 2004 by the United Nations as a World Heritage site, one of 16 Australian World Heritage sites and the first Australian structure to receive World Heritage recognition.

Shark Bay's name evokes images of deadly, predatory, man-eating sharks. In fact, Shark Bay on the western coast of Western Australia, a World Heritage site, is more home to dugongs, dolphins and stromatolites. It is a vast 2.3 million hectares of a fascinating aquatic world, a diver's paradise (where diving is allowed), and a place where you can almost shake hands with the dolphins.

The iconic building on Sydney Harbour, Sydney Opera House, has joined other famous world structures such as India's Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China when it was inscribed a World Heritage Building in 2007. Sydney Opera House was described by the World Heritage Committee as a "daring and visionary experiment that has had an enduring influence on the emergent architecture of the late 20th-century. The building is a great artistic monument and an icon."

With an area of more than 1 million hectares, and comprising a fifth of the island state of Tasmania, the Tasmanian Wilderness is one of the largest remaining temperate rainforests in the world. A place of peaks, gorges, rivers, caves, endemic flora, rare and endangered fauna, and — in so many parts of it — impenetrable forests, the Tasmanian Wilderness is a place for explorations, adventure and simply being with Nature at its most pristine.

There is no mistaking Kata-Tjuta National Park in Australia's Northern Territory. It is distinctively home to the iconic rock monolith that is Uluru, formerly known as Ayers Rock. Located in the Red Centre of Australia, the park draws innumerable visitors yearly: to gasp at the imposing presence and changing colors of Uluru, and to explore and take camel treks through Kata Tjuta.

With more than 100 scenic spots to visit, the Wet Tropics of Queensland offer not only striking scenic vistas but also a variety of river and rainforest activities. Some of its outstanding — if not astounding — features include Queensland's highest peaks, Bartle Frere and Bellenden Ker, and Australia's longest single-drop waterfall, the 305-metre (1000-foot) Wallaman Falls.

They were a system of lakes in the Pleistocene Epoch during the last Ice Age and today are dry lake beds with salt-tolerant low bushes and grasses. Dunes have been formed by prevailing winds, and erosion has sculpted the sand and clay into dramatic formations such as the Walls of China at Mungo National Park, part of the World Heritage-listed Willandra Lakes Region inscribed by the United Nations as a World Heritage site.