The Protected Landscape Approach - Centre for Mediterranean ...

15. The evolution of landscape conservation in Australia
Information collected through oral histories through the Memories Project.
Management of heritage places with shared histories across different phases of human land
use and between different communities will ensure that:
All aspects of the history of a place are identified, recorded and assessed;
Both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultural values are acknowledged at places where
they co-exist;
Management of the remaining physical evidence of one historical theme or story is not at
the expense of that of another; and
Visitor interpretation covers all aspects of the layered histories of such places.
Those parts of the Park containing concentrations of material cultural heritage will be
managed as discrete Heritage Precincts in which protection of historic features and landscapes
will receive high priority (www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au). These new directions, in accord
with National Parks and Wildlife Service policies, suggest that cultural heritage assessment
work should use the following principles:
An integrated, or whole-of-landscape, approach with regard to the identification and
assessment of all cultural (both historic and pre-contact Aboriginal) and natural values;
and
A cultural landscape approach to understanding the values of the item within its wider
environmental/biogeographic, historic and social setting (NPWS, 2002).
This case study illustrates the current response of a management agency to the need for more
cooperation with its neighbours by acknowledging their prior use of and associations with this
large national park and its treasured landscapes.
Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park
The applicability of the World Heritage cultural landscape categories to the Central Victorian
goldfields, a historic mining landscape, was tested as part of the 1996 State of Environment
reporting process and found to be applicable to a range of landscapes (Lennon, 1997). There is
increasing interest in understanding heritage landscapes as a means of linking communities
with these places (Cotter et al., 2001). In Victoria there is a heritage overlay in all local
government planning schemes. State heritage agencies incorporated cultural landscapes into
their categories of heritage places which cover private lands protected through planning
scheme controls similar to those for English national parks. The expansion of Victoria’s
Heritage Act 1995 allowed listing of landscapes (http://heritage.vic.gov.au/Heritage_
Landscapes/).
In 2003, the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park of 7,442ha was listed. It had been
gazetted in the 1970s as the Castlemaine-Chewton Historic Area (Regional Park) which
contained historic mining relics and archaeological evidence of the original (1852) rush to the
diggings. This area was re-examined as part of the Environment Conservation Council’s
Box-Ironbark Forests and Woodlands Investigation. The Council recommended creating a new
category of public land principally to protect and recognise outstanding cultural landscapes
(ECC, 2001). This designation is a first for Australia. The Castlemaine Diggings are significant
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