Inclusion in the National Heritage List of Watarrka National Park

(a)

The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place's importance in the course, or pattern, of Australia's natural or cultural history.

Watarrka National Park is of outstanding heritage value to the nation because of its importance in the evolution of Australian flora and fauna. Watarrka supports locally endemic plant and invertebrate taxa, relict plant taxa and communities, geographically and ecologically disjunct populations, as well as species on the edge of their geographic range or in atypical locations. Watarrka exhibits an unusual diversity of plants, with 691 known native species.

Watarrka is of outstanding heritage value to the nation because it provides refuges for flora and fauna. Although within one of the driest regions of Australia, the south facing gorges of the George Gill Range contain springs and other moist environments harbouring unique assemblages of moisture-loving plants. Four of these waterholes are of national botanical significance – Kings Canyon waterholes; Penny Springs; Reedy Creek Rockholes, and Wallaby Gorge waterholes. Watarrka’s springs and waterholes are home to a regionally endemic dragonfly and two species of camaenid snails, endemic to the George Gill Range. A small proportion of the invertebrate fauna is likely to comprise relict fauna, particularly the water penny beetle, Schlerocyphon fuscus. The presence of this beetle, with affinities to assemblages present in a much wetter era 18,000 years ago, can be attributed to the role of local aquifers in sustaining permanent surface water.

The geology and hydrology of the Mereenie Sandstone and its underlying layers underpin the evolution of Watarrka’s unique flora and fauna values.

These features are also an integral part of Watarrka’s rich cultural landscape.

(b)

The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place's possession of uncommon, rare or endangered aspects of Australia's natural or cultural history.

Watarrka is of outstanding heritage value to the nation because it supports rare or threatened plant species, and plant species that are poorly known. The extraordinary flora of the George Gill Range includes two endemic plant species – Amperea spicata and Hydrocotyle sp. Watarrka. An additional six species are considered rare at the national scale: Austrostipa aquarii Austrostipa centralis, Callistemon pauciflorus, Hakea grammatophylla, Sedopsis filsonii and Stylidium inaequipetalum. A further five species are poorly known at the national scale: Comesperma viscidulum, Davesia arthropoda, Euphorbia sarcostemmoides, Logania centralis and Sauropus ramosissimus.

(c)

The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place's potential to yield information that will contribute to an understanding of Australia's natural or cultural history.

Watarrka is of outstanding heritage value to the nation for its potential to yield information that will contribute to an understanding of Australia's arid zone plant species, their evolution and ecology.

Watarrka’s relictual springs may act as invaluable sentinel sites for research and monitoring on climate change stressors and the impacts of changing conditions in central Australia.

Watarrka provides the type localities (the first place a species was collected) for five plant species: Hydrocotyle sp. Watarrka, Amperea spicata, Sedopsis filsonii, Euphorbia sarcostemmoides and Brachycome blackii.

(d)

The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place's importance in demonstrating the principal characteristics of:

a class of Australia's natural or cultural places;

or a class of Australia's natural or cultural environments.

Watarrka is of outstanding value to the nation as the most important site for the conservation of plants in Central Australia. Watarrka supports an unusual diversity of arid zone plants, specifically species within the plant orders Malpighiales, Saxifragales, Proteales, Solanales, Fabales and Poales. Watarrka is also important for the diversity of species in Division Bryophyta and Orders Caryophyllales, Alismatales, Zygophyllales, Asterales and Myrtales.

The George Gill Range is an extremely significant refugium for endemic and relict plant species.

(e)

The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place's importance in exhibiting particular aesthetic characteristics valued by a community or cultural group

Watarrka is of outstanding value to the nation for its dramatic cultural landscape features that juxtapose with its surrounding arid landscape. These features have captured the public imagination of settler society since European exploration of Central Australia and continue to be important today.

Watarrka is a major international tourist attraction because of its aesthetic qualities, making it the second most highly visited park in the Alice Springs region. It is considered a uniquely Australian landscape with its dramatic natural features that afford spectacular views. The aesthetic value of the flora of the place has captivated European settlers since the first European expedition into the adjacent George Gill Range in 1889. The 1896 Horn Expedition, specifically Baldwin Spencer, recorded the picturesque qualities of the place as well as its scientific importance. Early writers have described Kings Canyon’s geographical beauty and stunning flora in detail with the earliest example being Arthur Groom in 1947 and 1948, who was particularly taken with the place's dramatic departure from the surrounding arid landscape. The European names for features within the National Park reflect the aesthetic link of classically educated writers to ancient architecture. A collection of Groom’s black and white photographs of Kings Canyon, Kings Creek and the George Gill Range are held by the National Library of Australia. Notable Australian films that have used the aesthetic qualities of Watarrka as a dramatic panoramic backdrop include the Stephan Elliot’s classic 1994 Australian movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, where the three protagonists complete the Rim Walk at Kings Canyon in drag costumes. A sharp increase in tourism to the place after 1994 has been attributed in part to this film sequence. It is a popular tourist destination with over 250,000 visitors per year.

The features that express this value are the spectacular Kings Canyon, with its 100 m sandstone cliffs; the Lost City beehive weathering formations in cross-bedded Mereenie sandstone at the top of the George Gill Range; and the lush vegetation surrounding waterholes in the canyons, gorges, and rockholes.

(i)

The place has outstanding heritage value to the nation because of the place's importance as part of Indigenous tradition

Watarrka National Park is a place of complex beliefs and of ongoing ceremonial importance to Anangu ngurraritja (traditional owners). The cultural significance of the place, and its importance in Indigenous law and culture, is inextricably linked to the area's outstanding geographical features, its flora, fauna and waters.

Dreaming tracks of utmost importance to Anangu ngurraritja cover almost the entire park. The responsibility for caring for Tjukurrpa (the Dreaming) weighs heavily on the ngurraritja. Many of the stories associated with Tjukurrpa remain secret and are only revealed in accordance with custom.

To Anangu, Watarrka National Park is the physical representation of Tjukurrpa. Tjukurrpa refers to an era in which ancestral beings brought the world into existence. Watarrka National Park continues to be a place where traditions, observances, customs and beliefs are handed down from generation to generation as they have been for thousands of years. Watarrka continues to play a central part in the traditional life of Anangu as a place for carrying out ceremonies and traditional 'business'.

This value is articulated through the physical features of the living cultural landscape of Watarrka National Park. It includes all that is united by the laws of Tjukurrpa and the physical manifestations of Tjukurrpa – the people, the plants, the animals, its waters and rock formations - together with the practice of those laws through song and ceremony.