Cultural and historic sites

Aboriginal people have lived in NSW for more than 40,000 years, and you can see evidence of this throughout historic sites with rock art and stone artefacts in our parks and reserves.

Aboriginal culture is present in our parks and is deeply linked to the entire environment including plants, animals and landscapes. Visitors to NSW national parks can discover more about Aboriginal culture by taking part in one of our Aboriginal Discovery walks, talks or tours which are available in a number of parks. When visiting, please remember these sites and places can be very fragile due to constant weathering and natural erosion. So, if you’re visiting, please take care of them by:

• Avoiding hand or foot contact with the site
• Leaving rocks, artefacts and vegetation as you find them.
• Not re-grooving or chalking the site or drawing on it
• Not placing water or sand on the site

You can also visit a range of historic European settlement sites in our parks, including the World Heritage-listed Old Great North Road, the 1860s gold rush town of Hill End, or the former defence facility of Fort Denison.

When visiting a historic place, you can help protect it by:

• Leaving the monument, landscape and any vegetation undisturbed.
• Leaving artefacts as you find them - they indicate how the site was used.
• Obeying any specific visitor rules and leaving them clean for other visitors