Australia's World Heritage Areas

Australia's World Heritage Areas

What is the purpose of the World Heritage list? What are the 18 Australian entries on the list?

The brand new Scenic Rim Trail, in the Gondwana Rainforests World Heritage Area.

I'm often surprised when I mention to people from the USA about World Heritage Listing (e.g, of an area such as the Blue Mountains) that most seem to have no idea what I am talking about. I'm even more perplexed when we have a government that is trying to de-list some Australian areas from the World Heritage list, as if it is something terrible that we should revoke.

Set up from 1972 by UNESCO, one of the arms of the United Nations, the World Heritage list was initially designed to prioritise which areas of the world we wanted preserved for evermore. The original list was of 12 places (a list first released in 1978) that were in great danger.
Three years later, the first Australian places were added to the list - the Great Barrier Reef, Willandra Lakes Region (home to Australia's oldest human remains) and Kakadu National Park.
Australia now has 18 entries on the list, including such diverse things as the Sydney Opera House and  Fossil Mammal sites at Riversleigh (Qld) and Naracoorte (SA). Some of our entries, such as the fossil sites, and the convict sites, are made up of multiple places in different locations. Others are large swathes of areas that are made up of different types of land use - national park, state land and private land.
As a science, environmental and outdoor-focused journalist, I've had the pleasure of visiting many of Australia's World Heritage-listed places. In fact, just last week I was hiking in part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, a large area around the NSW/Qld border that is listed.
I will nearly always mention World Heritage listing in an article about those places and the people associated with them, because I think making this UNESCO list means that it has been recognised by a worldwide body as a very important place - something worth preserving. Some of the areas are listed for their cultural heritage, others for their exceptional natural beauty, because they clearly show certain progressions in the earth's development, or because they are preserving something – plants, animals, ecosystems, a cultural practice – in serious peril of being lost.
I do find it hard sometimes to look at our list and justify everything on it on a world standard. For example, do we really think that the Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens, in Melbourne, should stand on an equal world footing as the great pyramids of Egypt or the Great Wall of China? However, we do know that the Royal Exhibition Building is the world's only surviving example of a great hall from a major international 19th-century exhibition. Neither I – nor you, I suspect – have sat on the committee determining what does and doesn't make the list, and so to an extent I believe we need to honour their decisions (although of course they can be questioned and their criteria should always be up for review).
To have something put on the list is indeed an honour for a country, and shows some of the valuable things that the rest of the world feels need to be preserved, and I thought that politicians of all persuasions would accept and nurture that fact. Usually politicians are in agreement on listings.
Much research has shown that World Heritage listing can be of exceptional economic value to an area. In the Wet Tropics of far north Queensland, when logging was halted due to World Heritage listing, tourism rose exponentially in the area, and within two years was worth seven times as much as the logging industry had been. The Adelaide Hills area is well aware of this value, and is therefore currently pushing for World Heritage listing.
Of course, being on the list doesn't really ensure absolute protection, as the current campaign on "saving the Great Barrier Reef" shows. However, it does provide a firm basis for determining policy, and a commitment from the rest of the world to help with advice and support.
I'm stoked that I live in a country with 18 listings on the World Heritage register. How fantastic that we have so much worth preserving, and more people pushing for even more to be listed (current talk includes Cape York, the Great Forests of Victoria and Adelaide Hills).

In terms of the rest of the world, it is hard to make a comparison, but Canada is an obvious choice because it is vaguely similar in size, the population is within the same ballpark (34 million vs 24 million), and our economies are similar. Canada has 17 World Heritage listings, and we have 18. So we are certainly not out of kilter with that comparison.
I hope that we can use the World Heritage register to rejoice over what is deemed by the rest of the world to be important, and to celebrate with them the wonderful things that make up Australia.

Tasmanian Wilderness, Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park

Australia's World Heritage list

Great Barrier Reef
Kakadu National Park
Willandra Lakes Region
Sydney Opera House
Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens (Melbourne)
Gondwana Rainforests of Australia
Wet Tropics of Queensland
Australian Fossil Mammal sites (Riversleigh/Naracoorte)
Convict sites (11 locations)
Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park
Greater Blue Mountains
Fraser Island
Tasmanian Wilderness
Purnululu National Park (Bungle Bungles)
Lord Howe Island group
Shark Bay
Heard and McDonald islands  
Macquarie Island