Wasteland to World Heritage: Preserving Australia's Wilderness

Once, wilderness was seen as waste or worthless land. Today, Australians are coming to value their threatened natural heritage, and are forcing government to play an active role in protecting it. Demands for wilderness preservation are not new. National parks were established widely at the turn of the century, and the bushwalking movement of the 1930s helped teach a generation to appreciate the "wild places". But not until the 1960s, when the modern conservation movement emerged, did the wider community find its voice. Celebrated controversies raged: Lake Pedder, the Franklin Dam, the Daintree rainforest, Kakadu. This work provides a history of wilderness preservation in Australia. It traces the shift in responsibility for wilderness preservation from local authorities to state governments, and from these to federal government and international bodies. It scrutinises the performance of state governments and describes how successive Commonwealth governments have responded to calls to use their well-defined powers to create a national system of preservation. It tells the story of a long campaign which is changing the face of Australia.