The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests in Oceania
17 places in 2 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful gardens, parks and forests in Oceania are Kakadu National Park (Australia), Fiordland National Park (New Zealand) and K'gari (Australia). The list covers 17 gardens, parks and forests in 2 countries. Australia has the most, with 10. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Australia and New Zealand have been isolated from other continents for tens of millions of years, and their living landscapes show it. Forests of eucalyptus, kauri and southern beech descend from the flora of the old southern supercontinent of Gondwana; glaciers carved New Zealand's southwest into fiords; and warm seas off northern and western Australia built some of the largest reef systems on Earth. Many of these places are also cultural landscapes cared for by Aboriginal and Māori people for thousands of years.
Fiordland National Park in New Zealand holds Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound, deep fiords walled by rainforest and waterfalls. Westland Tai Poutini brings the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers down towards temperate rainforest, while Abel Tasman National Park is a coast of golden beaches and granite headlands. In Waipoua Forest stands Tāne Mahuta, the largest living kauri tree, and on the shore of Lake Wānaka a single willow growing out of the water has become one of the most photographed trees in the country.
In Australia, Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park protects the sandstone monolith of Uluru and the domes of Kata Tjuta, sacred to the Aṉangu people. Purnululu in the Kimberley contains the striped beehive domes of the Bungle Bungle Range, and Karijini in the Pilbara cuts deep, narrow gorges through banded iron rock. Daintree National Park is an ancient tropical rainforest that meets the sea at Cape Tribulation, Ningaloo Reef is a fringing reef visited by whale sharks, and Taronga Zoo looks across Sydney Harbour.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kakadu National Park | National park | Australia | ✓ |
| 2 | Fiordland National Park | National park | New Zealand | ✓ |
| 3 | K'gari | Island | Australia | ✓ |
| 4 | Abel Tasman National Park | National park | New Zealand | |
| 5 | Taronga Zoo | Zoo | Australia | |
| 6 | Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park | National park | Australia | ✓ |
| 7 | Blue Mountains National Park | National park | Australia | ✓ |
| 8 | Tane Mahuta | Remarkable tree | New Zealand | |
| 9 | Ningaloo Reef | Coral reef | Australia | ✓ |
| 10 | Karijini National Park | National park | Australia | |
| 11 | Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki (Egmont National Park) | National park | New Zealand | |
| 12 | Lamington National Park | National park | Australia | ✓ |
| 13 | Westland Tai Poutini National Park | National park | New Zealand | ✓ |
| 14 | Purnululu National Park | National park | Australia | ✓ |
| 15 | Daintree National Park | National park | Australia | |
| 16 | Mount Aspiring National Park | National park | New Zealand | ✓ |
| 17 | That Wānaka Tree | Remarkable tree | New Zealand |
01 Kakadu National Park
Australia13.005° S 132.520° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Squirrel_photos from Pixabay The rock art is the heart of that cultural value. More than 5,000 art sites are recorded, painted over thousands of years in the rock shelters of the escarpment and its outliers, and they are among the finest bodies of Aboriginal rock art in Australia.
02 Fiordland National Park
New Zealand45.386° S 167.347° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Julius_Silver from Pixabay That rain does something specific underwater that most visitors never see. Runoff stained brown by forest tannins settles into a layer up to 10 metres deep on top of the denser seawater, and that dark layer filters sunlight so effectively that light conditions at 10 metres underwater match what you'd normally find at 70 metres in the open ocean.
Did you know? Captain James Cook named Dusky Sound Dusky Bay in 1770 and later sheltered there with HMS Resolution on his second voyage.
03 K'gari
Australia · 31.6 km from Hervey Bay25.240° S 153.150° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Poidabro · CC BY-SA 4.0 What astonishes visitors is that a heap of sand can hold rainforest. Tall forests grow in its interior, sustained by fungi in the soil that let plants draw nutrients from nothing but sand, fed by spring-fed creeks that run through most of the island's valleys.
04 Abel Tasman National Park
New Zealand40.900° S 172.971° E
Image by Ricardo_Helass from Pixabay The park was opened on 18 December 1942, three hundred years after the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman became the first European to reach New Zealand, when he anchored in Golden Bay in 1642. Much of the credit belongs to the ornithologist Pérrine Moncrieff, who campaigned for the reserve and served on its board for three decades. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was made its patron.
Did you know? Split Apple Rock, a granite boulder just off the park's southern coast, was cleaved in two along a natural joint in the stone.
05 Taronga Zoo
Australia · 4.1 km from Sydney33.843° S 151.241° E
istolethetv · CC BY 2.0 The zoo moved here from a cramped site in Moore Park. Its secretary, Albert Le Souef, visited the Hamburg Zoo in 1908 and came home convinced that animals should be shown without bars, in open, landscaped enclosures. The New South Wales government granted land on the harbour, and the new zoo opened on 7 October 1916.
Did you know? A critical review in 1967 swept away elephant rides, a miniature train and a monkey circus, turning the zoo towards conservation, science and education.
06 Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park
Australia25.322° S 130.986° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by xiSerge from Pixabay For the Aṉangu, the traditional owners, these are not scenic backdrops but living places. The features of Uluṟu are the marks left by ancestral beings in the creation period, and parts of Kata Tjuṯa hold knowledge reserved for initiated men.
Did you know? Uluṟu's rock layers stand almost on end, tilted at about 85 degrees, with an exposed thickness of at least 2,400 metres continuing below the plain.
07 Blue Mountains National Park
Australia · 13.6 km from Katoomba33.615° S 150.418° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by anncapictures from Pixabay Despite the name, these are not true mountains but an uplifted plateau, raised around 50 million years ago and then carved by rivers such as the Grose, the Coxs and the Wollangambe into a maze of valleys. The plateau tilts gently from about 1,100 metres near Mount Victoria down to under 200 metres around Glenbrook, while its highest point, Mount Werong, reaches 1,215 metres in the remote south.
Did you know? The Three Sisters rock formation near Katoomba was declared an Aboriginal Place in 2014.
08 Tane Mahuta
New Zealand35.601° S 173.527° E
W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0 Nobody knows exactly how old it is. Estimates range from about 1,250 to 2,500 years, which means the seed may have germinated anywhere between the centuries before Christ and the early Middle Ages. The tree is a survivor of the ancient subtropical rainforest that once covered much of the peninsula. It came to wider notice in January 1924, when surveyors marking out the route of what is now State Highway 12 through the forest came upon it.
Did you know? The Waipoua Forest around it was declared a sanctuary in 1952 to stop logging, and is the largest surviving remnant of northern New Zealand's kauri forests.
09 Ningaloo Reef
Australia22.739° S 113.628° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0 The reef is famous above all for its big visitors. From around March to August, whale sharks — the largest fish in the sea — gather along the outer reef, and Ningaloo is one of the most reliable places on earth to swim beside them. In winter the same waters become a migration route for humpback whales, manta rays, dolphins and dugongs. Within the reef itself live some 500 species of fish, around 300 of coral and some 600 of molluscs.
Did you know? In 2006 marine scientists surveying deeper water beyond the reef discovered previously unknown sponge gardens.
10 Karijini National Park
Australia22.251° S 117.976° E
Image by RuRu_SG from Pixabay 5 billion years old: banded iron formations laid down in ancient seas, striped in rust, purple, ochre and grey, together with dolomite and shale. In the gorges these layers are cut like pages of a book, and in places erosion has worn them into stepped ledges that form natural staircases down to the water.
Did you know? Most of the park's 250 to 350 mm of yearly rain comes in summer thunderstorms and cyclones, yet winter nights can bring frost.
11 Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki (Egmont National Park)
New Zealand · 23.5 km from New Plymouth39.267° S 174.100° E
Krzysztof Golik · CC BY-SA 4.0 The park takes in three volcanic centres. Taranaki itself is geologically young, active for roughly 200,000 years, with a secondary cone, Fanthams Peak, on its southern flank; its last eruptive activity dates from the mid-19th century. To the north-west rise the much older and long-extinct Pouākai and Kaitake ranges, between which lies the Ahukawakawa Swamp, an unusual high-altitude sphagnum wetland at about 920 metres.
Did you know? Māori legend tells that Taranaki fled west after losing a fight with Tongariro over the mountain Pihanga.
12 Lamington National Park
Australia · 33.4 km from Gold Coast28.142° S 153.115° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Alan Wigginton · CC BY-SA 4.0 The plateau is the eroded northern flank of the Tweed Volcano, a vast shield volcano centred on Mount Warning that was active some 23 million years ago. Rain and rivers have since cut its basalt and rhyolite lavas into the cliffs and deep valleys that make the scenery so dramatic.
Did you know? The blue Lamington crayfish is found only in streams on the Lamington plateau.
13 Westland Tai Poutini National Park
New Zealand43.567° S 170.083° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by ThierryBEUVE from Pixabay Franz Josef Glacier, Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere, and Fox Glacier, Te Moeka o Tuawe, descend from the snowfields of the main divide towards valleys lined with rainforest, so that ice and green forest lie within sight of each other. Near Fox Glacier township lies Lake Matheson, a small dark lake formed when a block of glacial ice melted out as Fox Glacier retreated some 14,000 years ago. 6 km leads round it to the classic viewpoints.
Did you know? The snowfield feeding Franz Josef receives up to 15 metres of precipitation a year, among the highest totals in the world.
14 Purnululu National Park
Australia17.449° S 128.546° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0 The domes are the park's signature. They are carved from Devonian sandstone, a plateau worn over some 20 million years into cone-shaped towers up to 250 m high with steep sides and rounded tops. The famous banding is a living skin: orange layers are stained by oxidised iron where the rock dries out quickly, while the dark grey bands are crusts of cyanobacteria growing where moisture lingers. Both help to hold the fragile surface together.
Did you know? Fan palms (Livistona victoriae) cling to sheer gorge walls in the park and can grow up to about 12 metres tall.
15 Daintree National Park
Australia · 34.4 km from Port Douglas16.300° S 145.200° E
Image by moremilu from Pixabay Its fame rests on age. The forests of the Daintree region are among the oldest continuously surviving rainforests on Earth, and they shelter an extraordinary concentration of primitive flowering plants — lineages that branched off early in the history of flowering plants and survive here as living relics.
Did you know? James Cook named Cape Tribulation on 10 June 1770, shortly before the Endeavour ran aground on a reef just offshore.
16 Mount Aspiring National Park
New Zealand44.383° S 168.733° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Tomas Sobek · CC BY 2.0 The landscape was shaped by ice. More than a hundred glaciers still cling to the ranges, and the broad, flat-floored valleys of the Matukituki, Dart, Rees and Wilkin rivers were scoured by much larger glaciers during the last ice age. Waterfalls spill from the valley walls, braided rivers spread across the valley floors, and above the bushline lie alpine meadows and tussock.
Did you know? Major Bernard Head made the first ascent of Mount Aspiring in November 1909.
17 That Wānaka Tree
New Zealand · 2.2 km from Wanaka44.698° S 169.117° E
Image by ArnaudMalanPhotography from Pixabay The tree's beauty is almost entirely a matter of setting and season. It is small and slightly crooked, its trunk rising from the lake as if from a mirror, and on still mornings its reflection doubles it exactly. Autumn turns the willow gold against the blue of the water; in winter it stands bare and graphic, with snow on the ranges beyond; at sunrise the lake can go pink and silver while the tree stays a dark silhouette.
Did you know? Life in cold lake water has left it stunted for a willow, with a single scrawny trunk and a crown only about six metres across.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful gardens, parks and forests in Oceania?
- On our list, Kakadu National Park (Australia) ranks first, followed by Fiordland National Park (New Zealand) and K'gari (Australia).
- Which country has the most gardens, parks and forests in Oceania?
- In our collection, the most come from Australia (10) and New Zealand (7).
- How big is Tāne Mahuta?
- Tāne Mahuta, the Lord of the Forest, is a kauri tree in Waipoua Forest about 51 metres tall with a trunk girth of nearly 14 metres. It is the largest known living kauri and is thought to be well over a thousand years old.
- What gives the Bungle Bungle domes their stripes?
- The sandstone domes of Purnululu are banded by alternating layers: orange bands coloured by iron oxides, and dark grey bands where cyanobacteria grow in layers that hold more moisture.
- Why is the Daintree rainforest so significant?
- The Daintree is part of the Wet Tropics of Queensland, among the oldest continuously surviving tropical rainforests on Earth. It preserves plant lineages from the age of Gondwana and is one of the few places where rainforest meets a coral reef coast.
- How many gardens, parks and forests are on this list in Oceania?
- The list covers 17 gardens, parks and forests in 2 countries. Australia has the most, with 10.