The Most Beautiful Nature Sanctuaries in Oceania
11 places in 2 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful nature sanctuaries in Oceania are Fiordland National Park (New Zealand), K'gari (Australia) and Abel Tasman National Park (New Zealand). The list covers 11 nature sanctuaries in 2 countries. Australia has the most, with 6. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Oceania's protected landscapes come from two very different lands. New Zealand is young and mountainous, raised along an active plate boundary and carved by glaciers, so its sanctuaries hold fjords, rainforest and ice descending almost to the sea. Australia is old and flat, with weathered rock formations shaped over hundreds of millions of years and some of the longest fringing reefs on the planet along its coasts. Many of these places are also central to Māori and Aboriginal culture.
Fiordland National Park in the southwest of New Zealand's South Island is a land of deep fiords, including Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound, enclosed by sheer, rain-washed walls. Abel Tasman National Park at the top of the South Island is the country's smallest national park, a coastline of golden beaches and granite headlands. Westland Tai Poutini National Park reaches from the Southern Alps to the Tasman Sea, with the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers flowing down towards temperate rainforest.
In central Australia, Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park protects the great sandstone monolith of Uluṟu and the domes of Kata Tjuṯa, both sacred to the Aṉangu people. Purnululu National Park in the Kimberley is known for the Bungle Bungle Range, beehive-shaped domes banded in orange and black. And off the coast of Western Australia, Ningaloo Reef runs close to the shore, where whale sharks gather each year.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fiordland National Park | National park | New Zealand | ✓ |
| 2 | K'gari | Island | Australia | ✓ |
| 3 | Abel Tasman National Park | National park | New Zealand | |
| 4 | Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park | National park | Australia | ✓ |
| 5 | Blue Mountains National Park | National park | Australia | ✓ |
| 6 | Ningaloo Reef | Coral reef | Australia | ✓ |
| 7 | Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki (Egmont National Park) | National park | New Zealand | |
| 8 | Lamington National Park | National park | Australia | ✓ |
| 9 | Westland Tai Poutini National Park | National park | New Zealand | ✓ |
| 10 | Purnululu National Park | National park | Australia | ✓ |
| 11 | Mount Aspiring National Park | National park | New Zealand | ✓ |
01 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. The effect is that black coral — a species that anywhere else needs depths beyond recreational diving limits — grows here at just 10 metres down, well within reach of an ordinary dive. The fjord looks calm on the surface; underneath, the rain is running an entirely different depth simulation.
Did you know? Some of its fiords reach as far as 40 kilometres inland from the Tasman Sea.
02 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. The island has more than a hundred freshwater lakes, including some forty perched lakes — lakes held above the water table on a hardened layer of sand and plant matter, about half of all such lakes known on Earth.
03 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. It has grown since then, most memorably in 2016, when New Zealanders crowdfunded the purchase of a beach at Awaroa Inlet and added it to the park.
Did you know? In 2016 nearly 40,000 people pledged about NZ$2.28 million to buy Awaroa beach, a campaign begun by two brothers-in-law over Christmas Day banter.
04 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. In 1985 the freehold title was handed back to the Aṉangu, who leased the park to the federal government for 99 years; it has since been run under joint management, and Aṉangu guides lead walks that explain bush foods, plants and Tjukurpa stories. In 2019, after a unanimous vote by the park board, the chains of the old climbing route were removed and climbing ended for good, in keeping with the owners' long-standing wish.
Did you know? The explorer Ernest Giles named Mount Olga in 1872 at the request of the botanist Ferdinand von Mueller, honouring Queen Olga of Württemberg, who had just made Mueller a baron.
05 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. Between Wentworth Falls and Blackheath the cliffs drop several hundred metres into the Jamison and Grose valleys, and waterfalls such as Bridal Veil Falls at Govetts Leap tumble off the escarpment.
Did you know? The park is the central of eight reserves that make up the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, listed in 2000.
06 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? Novelist Tim Winton donated his A$25,000 Western Australian Premier's Book Award prize in 2002 to the campaign against a resort planned at Mauds Landing.
07 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. Moist westerlies off the Tasman Sea drop between six and seven and a half metres of rain a year on the upper slopes, and the vegetation climbs in bands from lowland rainforest through stunted, moss-hung subalpine scrub to tussock and bare scoria.
Did you know? Created as a forest reserve in 1881, the park became New Zealand's second national park in 1900, after Tongariro.
08 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. Lamington forms part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area, recognised for preserving living links with the ancient forests of the southern supercontinent. Wildlife is rich: Albert's lyrebird, regent bowerbirds and crimson rosellas are local celebrities, red-necked pademelons graze the forest edges, and a bright blue crayfish lives in the plateau streams and nowhere else.
Did you know? The park sits on the northern flank of the Tweed Volcano, a shield volcano active around 23 million years ago.
09 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. To the north, Ōkārito Lagoon is a haunt of the white heron, kōtuku, and the lowland forests shelter the rowi, or Ōkārito kiwi, an endangered kiwi of the lowland forest.
Did you know? Fox Glacier's Māori name, Te Moeka o Tuawe, means 'the bed of Tuawe', completing the story of the two lovers.
10 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. The Bungle Bungles are one of the finest examples in the world of cone karst formed in sandstone, and exactly how they took shape is still not fully understood.
Did you know? The sandstone of the domes was laid down roughly 350 to 375 million years ago from sand and pebbles washed in by rivers from nearby mountains.
11 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. Kea, the inquisitive mountain parrot of the South Island, are often seen around the huts and passes.
Did you know? The park covers about 356,000 hectares at the southern end of the Southern Alps.
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 nature sanctuaries in Oceania?
- On our list, Fiordland National Park (New Zealand) ranks first, followed by K'gari (Australia) and Abel Tasman National Park (New Zealand).
- Which country has the most nature sanctuaries in Oceania?
- In our collection, the most come from Australia (6) and New Zealand (5).
- Is Milford Sound a sound or a fjord?
- Despite its name, Milford Sound is a fiord, a valley carved by glaciers and later flooded by the sea. A sound in the strict sense is a river valley flooded by the sea.
- Why are the Bungle Bungle domes striped?
- The bands reflect differences in the sandstone layers. Layers that hold more moisture support dark cyanobacteria, while drier layers are stained orange by iron oxide.
- What is Ningaloo Reef known for?
- Ningaloo is one of the longest fringing reefs in the world, lying close to the shore of Western Australia, and it is one of the best-known places to see whale sharks.
- How many nature sanctuaries are on this list in Oceania?
- The list covers 11 nature sanctuaries in 2 countries. Australia has the most, with 6.