The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed National Parks in Australia
5 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful UNESCO-listed national parks in Australia are Kakadu National Park, Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park and Blue Mountains National Park. The list covers 5 UNESCO-listed national parks. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Australia's World Heritage parks combine two kinds of age. The continent is geologically old and long isolated, so its landscapes keep worn sandstone ranges, ancient rainforests descended from Gondwana and plants and animals found nowhere else. It is also home to one of the oldest living cultures on Earth, and several of these parks are listed for their Aboriginal heritage as well as for their nature, a rare double recognition.
Kakadu, in the Northern Territory, stretches from tidal rivers and floodplains up to the Arnhem Land escarpment, where rock shelters such as Ubirr and Burrungkuy hold paintings made over thousands of years. Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa protects the great monolith and the domes of Kata Tjuṯa, and was among the first places listed by UNESCO as a cultural landscape, in recognition of Anangu law and tradition.
The Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, are a sandstone plateau cut by deep valleys and covered in a remarkable variety of eucalypts, with the Three Sisters standing above the Jamison Valley. Lamington National Park, on the Queensland border, belongs to the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, with subtropical forest, waterfalls and ancient Antarctic beech. In the far north-west, Purnululu shelters the Bungle Bungle Range, a maze of beehive-shaped domes striped orange and black.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kakadu National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 2 | Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 3 | Blue Mountains National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 4 | Lamington National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 5 | Purnululu National Park | National park | ✓ |
01 Kakadu National Park
Australia13.005° S 132.520° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Squirrel_photos from Pixabay Kakadu, in the Top End of Australia's Northern Territory, is the country's largest national park after one desert reserve: about 19,800 square kilometres, roughly the size of Wales, running from tidal rivers on the coast to the sheer sandstone wall of the Arnhem Land escarpment.
02 Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park
Australia25.322° S 130.986° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by xiSerge from Pixabay Few landscapes are as instantly recognisable as the one protected here: a single sandstone mass rising out of red sand plains in the centre of Australia, and, to the west, a cluster of great rounded domes. Uluṟu stands 348 metres above the plain with most of its bulk hidden underground, and its surface shifts colour through the day, glowing deep red at dawn and dusk because of iron oxide in the rock.
Did you know? Mount Olga, the highest dome of Kata Tjuṯa, rises about 546 metres above the plain, nearly 200 metres higher than Uluṟu.
03 Blue Mountains National Park
Australia · 13.6 km from Katoomba33.615° S 150.418° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by anncapictures from Pixabay Barely a couple of hours inland from Sydney, the land rises into a sandstone plateau cut by gorges so deep and sheer that early colonists took a quarter of a century to find a way across. Blue Mountains National Park protects the heart of this country: more than 260,000 hectares of cliffs, waterfalls, hanging swamps and eucalypt forest stretching along the eastern flank of the Great Dividing Range.
Did you know? The park is the central of eight reserves that make up the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, listed in 2000.
04 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 Lamington spreads across the high plateau of the McPherson Range on the border between Queensland and New South Wales, its rim standing around 900 metres above sea level only a short distance inland from the Pacific surf of the Gold Coast.
Did you know? Lamington National Park was established in 1915 and named after Lord Lamington, Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1902.
05 Purnululu National Park
Australia17.449° S 128.546° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0 Until 1983 the Bungle Bungle Range was known almost only to its Aboriginal owners and a few pastoralists. That year an aerial film crew making a documentary on the wonders of Western Australia flew over it, and the images of hundreds of striped, beehive-shaped domes rising from the savannah stunned the country.
Did you know? Purnululu means 'sandstone' in the local Kija (Gija) language; the origin of the name Bungle Bungle is uncertain and may come from a misheard word or a local grass.
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 UNESCO-listed national parks in Australia?
- On our list, Kakadu National Park ranks first, followed by Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park and Blue Mountains National Park.
- Why are the Blue Mountains blue?
- The eucalyptus forests release fine droplets of oil into the air. Together with dust and water vapour, they scatter blue light, giving the distant ridges their blue haze.
- What causes the stripes on the Bungle Bungles?
- The sandstone domes of Purnululu are banded by layers that hold water differently. Darker bands are coloured by cyanobacteria living in moister layers, and orange bands by iron and manganese oxides in drier ones.
- Why is Kakadu listed for both nature and culture?
- Kakadu has wetlands, escarpments and wildlife of world importance, and it also holds one of the great concentrations of rock art, recording Aboriginal life over thousands of years. It is one of the few World Heritage sites listed under both natural and cultural criteria.
- How many UNESCO-listed national parks are on this list in Australia?
- The list covers 5 UNESCO-listed national parks.