The area embraces the last unprotected part of the 1934 Greater Blue Mountains National Park proposal compiled by Myles Dunphy for the National Parks and Primitive Areas Council.

It also includes the Blue Mountains Western Escarpment lands from Blackheath to Lithgow.

After 10 years of campaigning and a further park proposal by the Colong Foundation, the Gardens of Stone National Park was created on the 29th of November 1994, covering 11,780 hectares.

In December 1995 a further 3,600 hectares of the original proposal were added to the Wollemi National Park.

Pagoda is a local name for a large tapering and often stepped or laminated sandstone formation.

Associated with these pagoda landforms are found large caves, mazes, ancient montane heathlands, endangered upland swamps, snowgums, grassy woodlands and moist gullies that contain tree ferns, stands of old growth forest and rainforest, and, in some places, slot canyons.

Reservation of the remaining unprotected parts of the Gardens of Stone as a State Conservation Area is urgently required to rein in ongoing and accelerating environmental degradation.

Genowlan Mountain (1,688 hectares) is a masterpiece in sandstone that rises more than 500 metres from the valley floor. Home to ‘Three Hundred Sisters’ and a biodiversity hotspot, Genowlan Mountain has more than 340 plants and 75 mammals and birds.
    Now the Mugii Murum-ban State Conservation Area.

Mount Airly (2,020 hectares) contains some of the State’s best preserved oil shale ruins located in a spectacular setting with dramatic valley views, and surrounded by cliffs of pagoda scenery. The ruins are a ghost town lost in time.
    Now the Mugii Murum-ban State Conservation Area.

Baal Bone and Long Swamp (7,800 hectares) comprise massed pagoda ‘villages’ above the Long Swamp, a diverse swampy plain. They collectively form an evocative landscape of broken stone, reminiscent of Cambodia’s forest of State Forest temples, while nearby indigenous cave art honours this landscape.

Newnes Plateau (22,000 hectares) contains ancient windswept montane heathlands, nationally endangered upland swamps, unique snowgum-snowgrass high plateau woodlands, and superlative sandstone formations that collectively make a highly biodiverse garden. The woodlands and swamps on Newnes Plateau represent the coldest and highest development of native vegetation on sandstone in the Sydney Basin.

Wollangambe Wilderness (2,380 hectares) is a popular destination with bushwalkers and canyoners. The wilderness features Goochs Crater, wild headwater streams, wet sclerophyll forests, and scientifically important spring-fed swamps.

The Western Escarpment (4,000 hectares) is renowned for its outstanding ochre-coloured escarpments. . Above them are rare plant communities, and below, fringing the escarpment, the dramatic valley scenery is enhanced by a wonderful blanket of forest. The area, which contains the first passes into the interior of the continent, is already appreciated for quiet family-based recreation and climbing.

The environment groups’ reserve proposal is an integrated plan of action to protect, manage and interpret the area’s heritage.

The reserve proposal aims to protect and manage:

• one of the most beautiful displays of sandstone geodiversity in Australia, comprising dramatically coloured sandstone escarpments and promontories, narrow canyons, cave overhangs, swamps and the complex arrays of rock pinnacles known as pagodas.


• one of the Blue Mountains’ areas of highest plant diversity including ancient windswept montane heathlands, nationally endangered upland swamps, a unique species of snowgum (E. gregsoniana) and other high plateau woodlands representing the highest development of native vegetation on Sydney Basin sedimentary rocks, and poorly conserved grassy white box woodlands on slopes below the sandstone;


• fascinating oil shale mining ruins on spectacular Airly Mesa;


• outstanding Aboriginal cultural sites on and around Newnes Plateau;


• the nationally significant first three rugged mountain passes west to the interior of Australia;


• the most popular recreation-forest destination in the Mountains.