The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed National Parks in Oceania
8 places in 2 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful UNESCO-listed national parks in Oceania are Kakadu National Park (Australia), Fiordland National Park (New Zealand) and Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park (Australia). The list covers 8 UNESCO-listed national parks in 2 countries. Australia has the most, with 5. Last updated 14 October 2026.
The World Heritage national parks of Australia and New Zealand show two very different kinds of land. Australia is ancient and worn down: its sandstone ranges and monoliths have been weathering for hundreds of millions of years, and its Aboriginal peoples have lived among them for tens of thousands, so several parks are listed for culture as well as nature. New Zealand is young and restless, pushed up along the boundary of two tectonic plates and sculpted by glaciers, rain and the sea.
Kakadu National Park, in the Northern Territory, joins the sandstone escarpment of Arnhem Land with vast seasonal wetlands, and its rock art sites, such as Ubirr and Burrungkuy, hold paintings made over many thousands of years. Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park surrounds the great sandstone monolith of Uluṟu and the domes of Kata Tjuṯa, and was among the first places listed by UNESCO as a cultural landscape, in recognition of the Aṉangu people's law and knowledge. In the Kimberley, Purnululu National Park protects the Bungle Bungle Range, a maze of beehive-shaped domes striped in orange and grey.
Across the Tasman Sea, Fiordland National Park forms the heart of Te Wāhipounamu in the south-west of New Zealand's South Island, where Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound reach deep inland between sheer, glacier-carved walls. Westland Tai Poutini National Park, on the wet west coast, is known for Franz Josef and Fox glaciers, which descend from the Southern Alps towards temperate rainforest close to the sea.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kakadu National Park | National park | Australia | ✓ |
| 2 | Fiordland National Park | National park | New Zealand | ✓ |
| 3 | Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park | National park | Australia | ✓ |
| 4 | Blue Mountains National Park | National park | Australia | ✓ |
| 5 | Lamington National Park | National park | Australia | ✓ |
| 6 | Westland Tai Poutini National Park | National park | New Zealand | ✓ |
| 7 | Purnululu National Park | National park | Australia | ✓ |
| 8 | Mount Aspiring National Park | National park | New Zealand | ✓ |
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 Fiordland National Park
New Zealand45.386° S 167.347° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Julius_Silver from Pixabay 2 million hectares of temperate rainforest and 14 fjords gouged out by glaciers that retreated long enough ago for forest to reclaim nearly every slope down to the waterline. Rudyard Kipling once called Milford Sound the eighth wonder of the world, and the sound alone gets roughly 6,000 to 8,000 millimetres of rain a year — several times London's annual total — spread across some 180 days.
Did you know? The park covers about 12,600 square kilometres and makes up nearly half of the Te Wāhipounamu World Heritage Site in south-west New Zealand.
03 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.
04 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.
05 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.
06 Westland Tai Poutini National Park
New Zealand43.567° S 170.083° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by ThierryBEUVE from Pixabay Westland Tai Poutini National Park runs from the crest of the Southern Alps down to the Tasman Sea on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island, and within a short distance it goes from peaks over 3,000 m to lowland rainforest and coastal lagoons. The highest point is Mount Tasman at 3,498 m.
Did you know? Franz Josef Glacier's Māori name means 'the tears of Hine Hukatere': according to legend, her tears for her lover Tuawe, killed by an avalanche, froze into ice.
07 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.
08 Mount Aspiring National Park
New Zealand44.383° S 168.733° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Tomas Sobek · CC BY 2.0 Mount Aspiring National Park covers more than 3,500 square kilometres of the southern end of the Southern Alps, a wilderness of ice-capped peaks, hanging glaciers, deep U-shaped valleys and beech forest that stretches from the head of Lake Wānaka toward Fiordland.
Did you know? Since 1990 the park has been part of the Te Wāhipounamu World Heritage Area.
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 Oceania?
- On our list, Kakadu National Park (Australia) ranks first, followed by Fiordland National Park (New Zealand) and Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park (Australia).
- Which country has the most UNESCO-listed national parks in Oceania?
- In our collection, the most come from Australia (5) and New Zealand (3).
- What makes the Bungle Bungles striped?
- The beehive domes of the Bungle Bungle Range are made of sandstone with alternating layers. Darker bands hold more moisture and support cyanobacteria, while lighter orange bands are coloured by iron oxides, giving the domes their stripes.
- Why are Kakadu and Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa listed for both nature and culture?
- Both are mixed World Heritage sites. Kakadu is valued for its wetlands, escarpment and ecosystems as well as one of the great concentrations of rock art, and Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa for its geology alongside the living cultural traditions of the Aṉangu people.
- What is Te Wāhipounamu?
- Te Wāhipounamu, meaning the place of greenstone, is a World Heritage area in the south-west of New Zealand's South Island. It brings together four national parks, including Fiordland and Westland Tai Poutini, and shows the effects of glaciation and plate tectonics on a dramatic scale.
- How many UNESCO-listed national parks are on this list in Oceania?
- The list covers 8 UNESCO-listed national parks in 2 countries. Australia has the most, with 5.