Royal National Park

Declared on 26 April 1879, barely seven years after Yellowstone, it is the second oldest national park in the world and the first in Australia, set a mere 30 km south of central Sydney. Originally called simply The National Park, it was renamed Royal National Park in 1955 after a visit by Queen Elizabeth II. In 1994 it suffered devastating bushfires that swept more than 90% of its area, an event that nonetheless allowed researchers to document in detail the extraordinary regenerative capacity of fire-adapted Australian vegetation, with most of the forest fully recovered within a few years.