A national register of the journeys that made us. The trails of First Nations peoples, the stock routes, goldfields roads and coastal ways that carry Australia’s story.
The project
Every nation walks its history. It is time Australia mapped the way. The National Heritage Trails project builds four pieces of permanent national infrastructure, owned and operated by the National Trust.
A formal, curated register of Australia’s heritage trails, each assessed against national criteria for cultural significance, condition and visitor experience, with the most important designated as nationally significant.
A national website and web app, with every trail’s route, places along the way, histories, itineraries and education resources. Routes open directly in Google Maps and download to any device.
App enabled discovery on the trail itself, with live routes, audio storytelling at each place, and QR coded signage that keeps physical markers simple while the story stays rich and current.
Governance that endures, with a national curatorial committee drawn from every state and territory Trust, First Nations custodianship protocols, and a maintenance and review cycle for every registered trail.
Five journeys, one nation
Five candidate trails show the breadth of what the register will hold. Every state a different century, a different mode of travel, a different Australia. Each is real, mapped and ready to be told properly.
A pathway walked for thousands of years, joining the highest point of the continent to the sea, trading, teaching and keeping kinship alive across the Monaro. In 2013 it became the first Aboriginal pathway listed on the NSW State Heritage Register.
Why it belongs: the oldest kind of Australian journey, honoured under First Nations custodianship at national scale.
View this trail →C. Y. O’Connor’s goldfields water scheme, opened in 1903, pushed fresh water 550 kilometres uphill from the Perth hills to the driest goldfields on earth, and is still running. The trail threads pump stations and wheatbelt towns.
Why it belongs: a National Trust made trail already in the family, proving the model of drive, stop, learn and spend in the regions.
View this trail →The richest alluvial goldfields the world has known remade Australia in a decade. The route links Sovereign Hill, Trust properties and intact streetscapes across a region now pursuing UNESCO World Heritage recognition.
Why it belongs: the proposed pilot’s heart, where heritage visitation already works and a national mark multiplies it.
View this trail →Australia’s most complete colonial road, surveyed in 1821 and built by convict gangs whose bridges and garrison towns still stand. A national trail here turns a two hour drive into a two day journey through the founding decades.
Why it belongs: the convict story, told where it happened, on a route every visitor to Tasmania already crosses.
View this trail →The Monster Mine at Burra paid for South Australia and drew Cornish miners in their thousands; their cottages, chimneys and chapels survive in one of the most intact mining landscapes anywhere. Burra links town walks, the mine site and rail trail cycling into a single register ready experience.
Why it belongs: the proof of concept, where the register’s digital tools meet a community that has kept its heritage whole.
View this trail →Why it matters
Walking and cycling trails are preventive health infrastructure, inviting Australians of every age onto their feet and their bikes, with all access routes alongside multi day journeys.
Trails carry stories buildings cannot. Songlines and trade routes, convict roads, goldfields tracks and migration journeys. Registration protects them; interpretation, guided by First Nations custodians, brings them to life.
Every route favours low impact travel. Walking, cycling, rail and EV friendly touring disperse visitation away from pressured sites and give Australians a stake in the landscape.
Around 70 per cent of Australia’s cycle tourism already happens in the regions. Heritage trails send visitors, and their spending, down main streets that need them.
Every trail publishes curriculum aligned resources, so a Year 5 class can walk its local history and a regional school can teach from the nation’s best heritage scholarship, free, forever.
The Trust’s 7,000 volunteers, local historical societies, friends groups and men’s sheds become the custodial workforce of the register.
Plan a journey
Every trail is searchable by state, theme, mode and duration, with itineraries for one, two and three day journeys at every activity level, public transport connections and printable guides. Every route opens as a live route in Google Maps and downloads as a universal GPX file for Strava, Ride with GPS, Garmin and any navigation device.
The founding campaign
Australia’s great journeys already exist. Help us put them on the map. The register asks for a founding generation, with every founding gift recognised on the national platform, launch materials and annual impact reporting.
$900,000
over four years, to develop, build and staff the register through establishment to self sufficiency. Beyond establishment, the register sustains itself through founding sponsorships and regional promotion.
Become a founding donor Become a member| $25 | Helps digitise or interpret a heritage place. |
| $250 | Supports research or audio storytelling. |
| $2,500 | Helps map and publish a section of trail. |
| $10,000 | Supports a trail launch, interpretation or signage. |
| $50,000 | Establishes a founding trail partnership. |
Major contributors are acknowledged as Founding Benefactors, Founding Trail Partners or members of the 900 Club, in perpetuity.
The National Heritage Trails register will outlast every one of us who builds it. It asks for a founding generation. A government willing to recognise it, benefactors willing to seed it, and the National Trust movement, which has kept faith with Australia’s heritage for eighty years, to carry it.
We would be pleased to present the full business plan and walk the first trail with you.
