Australia gazetted a national park seven years after Yellowstone
Royal National Park covers 151 square kilometres about 29 kilometres south of Sydney’s CBD in Sutherland Shire and Illawarra country. Acting Premier Sir John Robertson had it proclaimed on 26 April 1879—only seven years after Yellowstone (1872) and eleven before Yosemite became a U.S. national park in 1890.
Yosemite land had federal protection from 1864, but it received the national park title only later, so Royal is often described as the first park proclaimed under that name. It entered Australia’s National Heritage List in December 2006. The park straddles Sutherland Shire in southern Sydney and the City of Wollongong in the Illawarra, sits on Dharawal Country, and contains the settlements of Audley, Maianbar and Bundeena.
Its terrain runs from coastal cliffs interrupted by beaches and little coves up to an old elevated plateau sliced by deep river valleys. Those valleys drain northward into Port Hacking, a broad but mostly shallow inlet forming the park’s northern edge, and from any lookout ridge after ridge recedes into the distance.
Roads from Loftus, Waterfall and Otford reach Audley, stations from Loftus to Otford ring the park, and ferries link Cronulla with Bundeena and Maianbar. A branch railway into the park closed in 1991 and now carries the Sydney Tramway Museum’s heritage trams. More than 100 kilometres of tracks cross the reserve, led by the 30-kilometre Coast Walk from Bundeena to Otford, usually spread over two days and popular with Duke of Edinburgh’s Award groups. The Wallumarra Track, built in 1975 for environmental education, takes its name from an Aboriginal word for education or protection.
Camping is allowed only at Bonnie Vale, North Era and Uloola Falls, all pre-booked, and cars pay an entry fee while walkers enter free. Bushfires swept the park in 1939, 1994 and the Black Christmas fires of 2001; the native bush regrew, and by 2008 few scars were visible, though rangers may close the park in extreme fire danger.
Source: Royal National Park
