WET TROPICS OF
QUEENSLAND
The Wet Tropics of Queensland is a region of
spectacular scenery and rugged topography
with fast-flowing rivers, deep gorges and
numerous waterfalls. Mountain summits
provide expansive vistas of undisturbed
rainforests.
This stunningly beautiful area is extremely
important for its rich and unique biodiversity. It is
one of the largest rainforest wilderness areas in
Australia and stretches along the northeast
coast between Townsville and Cairns for some
450 kilometres, covering approximately 8 940
square kilometres. The combination of fringing
coral reefs and rainforest coastline in the Cape
Tribulation region is rare in the world.
The Wet Tropics rainforests contain an almost
complete record of the major stages in the
evolution of plant life on earth. Many species
within the World Heritage Area originated when
Australia was part of Gondwana. This
breathtaking landscape is still cared for by its
Aboriginal Rainforest People.
The Wet Tropics of Queensland was inscribed
on the World Heritage List in 1988 in recognition
of its outstanding natural universal value and
was one of the world heritage places included in
the National Heritage List on 21 May 2007. In
November 2012 the federal heritage minister
included the Wet Tropics of Queensland’s
national Indigenous heritage values as part of
the 2007 National Heritage Listing.
year round in the rainforest.
Bush food and land management
Evidence suggests that the Aboriginal
Rainforest People used at least 14 different
toxic native plants as their main food source.
Such an intensive use of toxic plants by
Aboriginal people is not recorded anywhere
else in Australia. The stories and traditions
passed down from the ancestors of the
Aboriginal Rainforest People provided them
with the information and knowledge they
needed to survive.
A tradition of the Kuku-Yalanji people describes
how Kubirri, a Rainbow Serpent showed their
ancestors which food they could eat and how to
process and prepare it. Another tradition
describes how a skink called Junbirr taught two
Kuku-Yalanji sisters how to make flour from the
toxic cycad nut.
From these traditions and creation stories the
Aboriginal Rainforest People developed
complex food processing techniques and a
range of different tools to make these plants
safe to eat.
These tools are unique to the Wet Tropics. The
tools used in the Wet Tropics include a grooved
slab and crushing stone, or an anvil stone with
small hollows used with a hammer stone or a
polished stone axe called an Ooyurka.
Indigenous national heritage
values
Food processing techniques such as those still
used today by the Jirrbal people for the
processing of the black bean (or the Moreton
Bay chestnut) involved a number of different
stages. The seeds are removed from the large
black bean pods and then boiled in water for a
long time, maybe over night and when the water
turns black the seeds are removed and sliced or
grated for the leaching process to remove the
poison.
The Indigenous heritage of the Aboriginal
Rainforest People is unique to the Wet Tropics
of Queensland and is a remarkable and
continuous Indigenous connection with a tropical
rainforest environment.
In addition to developing a cultural tradition that
enabled the Aboriginal Rainforest People to
adapt to their environment, Aboriginal
Rainforest People were able to change the
landscape around them.
Archaeological evidence suggests they have
been living in the rainforest for at least 5 000
years.
The innovative use of fire for land management
by the Aboriginal Rainforest People is unique to
the Wet Tropics and was a major factor in
enabling them to live year-round in the
rainforest environment.
To survive in an at times inhospitable
environment the Aboriginal Rainforest People
developed a distinctive cultural heritage
determined by their dreamtime and creation
stories and their traditional food gathering,
processing and land management techniques.
The Wet Tropics is the only place in Australia
where Aboriginal people have permanently
inhabited a tropical rainforest prior to European
arrival. Their unique cultural practices and
technical achievements made it possible to live
Aboriginal Rainforest People used fire to protect
and clear land for their high calorie crops such
as yams and to keep walking tracks clear of
vegetation to enable travel between campsites
and hunting. Walking tracks were kept clear by
placing hot coals at the base of lawyer vines to
retard their growth and to kill or prune individual
plants. This fire land management technique is
unique to the Wet Tropics.
The distinctiveness of the traditions and
technical innovation of the Aboriginal Rainforest
People and their expertise needed to process
and prepare toxic plants as food and their uses
of fire is of outstanding heritage value to the
nation.
types, further classified into 64 broad plant
communities. Mangrove forests in the Wet
Tropics support the highest floristic diversity of
any mangrove community in Australia,
comparable with that found anywhere in the
world.
Natural heritage values
The area supports an exceptionally high level of
plant species diversity, with over 3 000 vascular
plant species in 224 families found there, of
which 576 species and 44 genera are endemic.
Of particular importance are the primitive
flowering plants in the rainforests. Of 19 families
of angiosperms recognised as primitive, 13
occur in the Wet Tropics. Two of these are
confined to the area. This gives the Wet Tropics
the highest concentration of such families on
earth.
Rainforests have persisted in the Wet Tropics
since Gondwanan times and contain one of the
most diverse and complete living records of the
major stages in the evolution of land plants. The
Wet Tropics also contains outstanding
examples of significant ongoing ecological
processes and biological evolution. As well as
being a place of exceptional natural beauty, the
Wet Tropics today provides the only habitat for
numerous rare species of plants and animals.
There are 380 plants and 102 animals in the
Wet Tropics that are considered rare or
threatened.
Flora
The vegetation is predominantly rainforest, but
includes mixtures with sclerophyll tree species
occurring as emergent and co-dominant species
in the canopy. Fringing the rainforests are tall
open forest and tall, medium and low woodland.
The sharp demarcation between the rainforest
and adjacent sclerophyll vegetation is a striking
feature of the Wet Tropics.
The rainforests of the Wet Tropics are
floristically and structurally the most diverse in
Australia. They include 13 major structural
The rainforests are also important as habitats
for the conservation of the plant family
proteaceae, in particular the more primitive
genera of the family. These genera represent
the nearest relatives of the ancestors of the
sclerophyll types, for example, banksias,
grevilleas, and persoonias, which form a major
part of the Australian flora.
There is a large number of plant species with
very restricted distribution within the Wet
Tropics. There are some curiosities, including
one of the largest and one of the smallest
cycads in the world. The area has the richest
concentration of ferns and fern allies in Australia
(65 per cent of Australia’s fern species),
including 46 fern species that are restricted to
the area.
Fauna
The Wet Tropics of Queensland covers less than
0.2 per cent of Australia and is home to 30 per
cent of Australia’s marsupial species, 58 per
cent of bat species, 29 per cent of frog species,
20 per cent of reptile species, 58 per cent of the
butterfly species and 40 per cent of bird species.
Around 85 species of vertebrate animals are
unique to the area, including what is considered
the most primitive surviving kangaroo species,
the musky rat kangaroo. Rare species of
animals found in the Wet Tropics include the
northern bettong, the spotted-tailed quoll, the
yellow-bellied glider and the southern
cassowary.
Management of the Wet
Tropics of Queensland World
Heritage Area
The management of the Wet Tropics of
Queensland World Heritage Area is on three
levels. An Australian Government council and
the Wet Tropics Management Authority are
responsible for general planning and policy
development. The Wet Tropics Management
Authority is advised by Community Consultative
and Scientific Advisory Committees and the
Rainforest Aboriginal People’s Alliance and
other Aboriginal organisations. Queensland
Parks and Wildlife Service and other land
holders manage the day-to-day aspects of the
Wet Tropics.