National Parks of Australia and New Zealand, From Kakadu to Taranaki

Kakadu is the starting point because it combines natural and cultural values in a single World Heritage listing, with floodplains, sandstone escarpment and monsoon forest, and one of the largest concentrations of ancient rock art sites in the world. It is jointly managed by its Aboriginal traditional owners and the Director of National Parks.

Further south in the Northern Territory, Nitmiluk centres on the Katherine River, which has cut thirteen connected gorges through ancient sandstone. The name means place of the cicada dreaming in the Jawoyn language, and the Jawoyn people are the traditional custodians.

Litchfield lies about 100 kilometers southwest of Darwin and is known for Wangi, Florence and Tolmer Falls, magnetic termite mounds and pockets of monsoon rainforest. After the gorge country of Nitmiluk it shows the same Top End landscape made accessible, with more than 329,000 visitors a year.

Moving west to the East Kimberley, Purnululu protects the Bungle Bungle Range, beehive-shaped sandstone towers up to 250 meters high. Their black and orange bands come from cyanobacteria that stabilize the rock, and UNESCO inscribed the park in 2003 for roughly 20 million years of erosion.

Karijini sits in the Hamersley Range of the Pilbara, where slot canyons, waterfalls and waterholes are cut into rock estimated at 2.5 billion years old. At about 6,274 square kilometers it is the second largest national park in Western Australia, on the homeland of the Banyjima, Kurrama and Innawonga peoples.

At the centre of the continent, this park protects the monolith Uluru, rising 348 meters, and the 36 rock domes of Kata Tjuta. It has been jointly managed by Parks Australia and the Anangu since 1985, and UNESCO listed it in 1987 for both natural and cultural significance.

In South Australia, the park gained the word Ikara, meaning meeting place, in its name in 2016 to honor the Adnyamathanha traditional owners. Its natural amphitheater Wilpena Pound lies beneath St Mary Peak, and a reference section at Enorama Creek, ratified in 2004, defines the base of the Ediacaran period.

Turning to the northeast coast, Daintree protects part of the Greater Daintree Rainforest, believed to have existed continuously for more than 110 million years. In 2021 the eastern Kuku Yalanji people gained formal ownership of much of the park through an agreement with the Queensland government.

About 80 kilometers west of Sydney, this park forms part of the Greater Blue Mountains Area World Heritage site. It shelters the rare Wollemi Pine and the Three Sisters rock formation, and it is the most visited national park in New South Wales, with 5.2 million visitors in 2016.

In Victoria, the Grampians are sandstone mountain ranges that hold about 90 percent of the state's rock art sites. The park was added to Australia's National Heritage List on December 15, 2006, for its natural beauty and as one of the richest concentrations of Aboriginal rock art in the southeast.

Only 1,750 hectares, Port Campbell shows what the Southern Ocean does to limestone: the Twelve Apostles sea stacks, London Bridge, Loch Ard Gorge, arches and blowholes. It began in 1964 with 700 hectares and reached its present size by 1981.

In Tasmania, Freycinet shares with Mount Field the distinction of being the state's oldest national park, established in 1916. It is known for the curved sand of Wineglass Bay and the pink and red granite peaks called the Hazards, and it protects forty nine plant and animal species found only in Tasmania.

Crossing the Tasman Sea to New Zealand, the path reaches Aoraki / Mount Cook, the country's highest peak at 3,724 meters. Glaciers cover forty percent of this park, including the Tasman Glacier, and it is jointly managed by the Department of Conservation and Ngai Tahu.

Arthur's Pass, established in 1929, is divided by State Highway 73 into a drier eastern side of mountain beech forest and a wetter western side of dense rainforest with podocarp and rata trees. It protects native species such as the orange-fronted parakeet and the blue duck.

At the top of the South Island, Abel Tasman was established in 1942 to mark 300 years since the navigator's 1642 sighting of New Zealand. At about 237 square kilometers it is the smallest of the country's national parks, yet among the most visited, and its 60 kilometer coast track is a popular walk.

The path ends on the North Island at Egmont, also called Te Papakura o Taranaki, the country's second national park after Tongariro, founded in 1900. It protects the dormant volcano Mount Taranaki with the cones of Pouakai and Kaitake, and the Ahukawakawa Swamp holds rare species adapted to acidic soils.