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Royal National Park Australia Facts & Worksheets

Royal National Park Australia was the country’s first official national park.

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Royal National Park Australia was the country’s first official national park. Located in New South Wales, around thirty kilometres south of Sydney, ‘Nasho,’ as the locals call it, was formally proclaimed on April 26, 1879, making it the world’s second oldest national park.

See the fact file below for more information on the Royal National Park Australia or alternatively, you can download our 25-page Royal National Park Australia worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

Location and General Information

  • Royal National Park is located in the traditional lands of the Dharawal, an Aboriginal Australian people. 
  • The 14,969-hectare park surrounds the ocean and estuarine shorelines from Botany Bay to the Shoalhaven River, and forest lands to the Georges River and Appin.
  • Audley, Maianbar, and Bundeena are the park’s three settlements – all part of the Sutherland Shire and in the state of New South Wales, Australia.
  • The five-time New South Wales Premier in the early 1800s, Sir John Robertson, founded Royal National Park NSW as part of his major land reform policies.
  • It included the Robertson Land Acts of 1861, designed to break the monopoly then held by squatters and open up the selection of Crown land. 
  • It was originally known as just ‘National Park’ but was renamed ‘Royal National Park’ in 1955 to honour Queen Elizabeth’s 1954 Australian tour. 
  • Because of its coastal attraction, the park attracts visitors for its secluded beaches, bushwalking and biking trails, picnic grounds, camping grounds, rowboats, and various swimming holes.

Geography and Habitat

  • The park’s geography includes coastal cliffs split by inlets and beaches, high plateaus broken by deep river valleys, and sections of bushland on mostly even terrain. 
  • Along the coast is a heathland of salt-tolerant shrubs such as she-oak, grass trees, ground-level forms of coast banksia, long-leaf mat-rush, coastal rosemary, honey-myrtle, ridged heath-myrtle, pine heath, kangaroo grass, and clifftop grasslands. 
  • The heathlands are home to many species of native birds as Lewin’s honeyeaters, New Holland honeyeaters, Beautiful Firetails, Chestnut-rumped heathwren, and Southern Emu-wrens.
  • The river valleys are home to eucalyptus trees, redgums, Port Jackson pines, banksias, a variety of native orchids, grass trees, waratahs, wattles, Gymea lilies, and rarer hybrid species.
  • Along the Port Hacking River residents are the mudflats and salt marsh, where mangrove trees grow and fish such as yellowfin bream and flat-tail sea-mullet breed. 
  • More bird species can be also found here, such as herons, egrets, ibises, kingfishers, pelicans, and 250 other species. 
  • The tidal rock shelves and rock pools accommodate mollusks, Sydney Rock oysters, Waratah anemones, Biscuit sea stars, and deadly blue-ringed octopus.

Attraction

  • sydney.com recommends the best walking and cycling trails in the Royal National Park include:
    • Bundeena Drive to Marley walk, an 8km return walk
    • The Coast Track, a two-day hike
    • Curra Moors loop track, a 10km return walk
    • Forest path, a 4.4km loop walk
    • Karloo walking track, a 10km return walk
    • Uloola walking track, 11km one-way walk
    • Loftus loop trail, a 10km return mountain bike trail
    • Lady Carrington Drive, a 10km one-way shared track
  • Tourists can also have the chance to spot humpback whales from Governor Game lookout during the migration season between May and November.
  • In the park are world-class beaches including Wattamolla, Garie, and Burning Palms. 
  • Rowboat or canoeing from Audley Boatshed and across Kangaroo Creek and the Hacking River is also available to more extreme adventurers. Bundeena Kayaks provides kayaking tours into the park as well.

Park Management

  • The New South Wales (NSW) National Parks and Wildlife Service is the governing body in protecting and conserving the values of the Royal National Park.
  • They are also dedicated to preserving their Aboriginal culture. The park’s significant sites are maintained in keeping with efforts to protect and preserve its heritage. 
  • Members of local Aboriginal communities are engaged as a priority in development.
  • However, there are some inevitable environmental disasters that the park can’t avoid such as the bushfire, especially in areas where there are fire-prone vegetation types.
  • Several parts of the park had been closed to clear the vegetation from the potential resurgence of fire. Various agencies and volunteers often work together in order to save indigenous species such as the native animals and rescue trapped communities from the devastation.
  • But this devastation has been going on even before the settlers arrived. 
  • Although the aboriginal people relied on controlled bushfires for agricultural purposes, there are some that go wild usually due to heat.
  • In 1993–94, Sydney and NSW’s eastern seaboard suffered about 800 severe fires.
  • Fires in the Royal National Park raged toward Bundeena, then swept into the southern Sydney suburbs of Como and Jannali where many homes were destroyed, along with two schools, a church, and a kindergarten.
  • Today, modern measures are constantly engaged to avoid devastation along the coast and the surrounding forest of Royal National Park.

Royal National Park Australia Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle that includes everything you need to know about Royal National Park Australia across 25 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about Royal National Park Australia which is Australia’s first national park.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • Royal National Park Australia Facts
  • Get to Know Australia
  • Speak Like an Aussie
  • Things to Do in RNP
  • Things NOT to do in RNP
  • Preparing for a Hike
  • Poem for the Wild
  • Beach Day! Ad
  • Best Activity
  • Travel Tips
  • Our Local Pride

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Link will appear as Royal National Park Australia Facts & Worksheets: https://kidskonnect.com - KidsKonnect, September 11, 2021

Use With Any Curriculum

These worksheets have been specifically designed for use with any international curriculum. You can use these worksheets as-is, or edit them using Google Slides to make them more specific to your own student ability levels and curriculum standards.