Gondwana Rainforests of Australia
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How it came to be
For about 40 million years after Australia split from Gondwana, rainforest covered most of the continent. As Australia drifted north the forest shrank, and by European settlement in 1788 it covered about 1% of the land. Logging since then has destroyed a further three-quarters of the rainforest that existed in 1788.
What is left lies scattered along the Great Escarpment of south-east Queensland and north-east New South Wales, protected in 41 reserves. Aboriginal people used the forests for ceremony, food and shelter, and as a refuge from European settlers. They hold more than 270 threatened species, and two mammals thought extinct, the Hastings River mouse and the parma wallaby, were found again here.
The reserves were inscribed in 1986 as the Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves (Australia), and the boundaries were enlarged by 35% in 1994. They took their present name in 2007 and joined the National Heritage List on 15 May that year. The bushfires of 2019-2020 burned about 53% of the area.
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