Gondwana Rainforests of Australia

Gondwana Rainforests of Australia Information

Located in South East Queensland, the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia include the most extensive areas of subtropical rainforest in the world with large areas of warm temperate rainforest and nearly all of the Antarctic beech cool temperate rainforest.

The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage area includes expansive rainforest reserves in both Queensland and New South Wales. Queensland National Parks that belong to the area include:

- Lamington National Park

- Springbrook National Park

- Mt Barney National Park

- Main Range National Park

Exploring the World Heritage rainforest in the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia is easy, with many of the parks readily accessible from major towns by sealed or graded gravel roads. The wide range of visitor facilities include kilometres of walking tracks; guided walking and adventure tours and various accommodation options.

Rainforest once covered most of the ancient southern super-continent Gondwana and remains the most ancient type of vegetation in Australia. Few places on earth contain so many plants and animals that are almost identical to their ancient ancestors. There is a concentration of primitive plant families, that are directly linked to flowering plants existing over 100 million years ago, as well as some of the oldest elements of the world’s ferns and conifers.

Although rainforests cover only about 0.3% of Australia, they contain about half of all Australian plant families and about a third of Australia’s mammal and bird species. The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia have an extremely high conservation value and provide habitat for more than 200 rare or threatened plant and animal species.