Heritage is intrinsically about values and reflections of our past. A key to protecting heritage is to foster awareness and appreciation, which in turn encourages a common concern to safeguard our cultural heritage for future generations.
Celebrating heritage keeps it meaningful and alive for communities now and in the future.
We collaborate with others to protect and celebrate our state’s heritage. Some of our initiatives and partnership programs include the following.
Sydney Mardi Gras Parade Route State Heritage Register listing
Parramatta Female Factory and Institutions Precinct
The Parramatta Female Factory and Institutions Precinct is one of Australia's most important historic sites and is recognised and protected through local, state and national heritage listings. The precinct tells a powerful story of the institutionalisation of women and children over more than 180 years, including convict women, orphans, asylum patients and Aboriginal girls and boys. These experiences are central to Australia's history and continue to be recognised, protected and shared.
Following advice provided through the UNESCO World Heritage Centre preliminary assessment process, the Parramatta Female Factory and Institutions Precinct will not proceed to a World Heritage List nomination. However, this outcome does not diminish its significance or the strong heritage protections already in place.
In recent years, NSW Government agencies have done significant conservation, research and interpretation work across the precinct. This has preserved important elements of the site, strengthened understanding of its heritage values, and positioned the precinct well for the future. Recent research and analysis have deepened our knowledge of the precinct's history and will continue to inform its conservation, management and interpretation.
Heritage NSW is continuing to bring stakeholders together to develop a shared understanding of the precinct's heritage values and support their ongoing protection and interpretation.
See more information about the precinct's National Heritage listing.
Broken Hill Trades Hall
Heritage NSW has been working with the Victorian and the Australian Governments to promote the world heritage values of the Australian components of the serial, transnational World Heritage List nomination of Workers' Assembly Halls.
The Workers' Assembly Halls nomination has been led by Denmark and coordinated by the Workers Museum of Copenhagen. The four component sites are Broken Hill Trades Hall, Victorian Trades Hall, Melbourne, Feestlokaal Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium and the Workers Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark.
These building complexes collectively bear witness to the formative years of the international democratic labour movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Built by workers for workers, they stand as enduring monuments to the struggle for labour rights, the expansion of democratic participation, and the universal aspiration for equality and human dignity.
An architectural gem in a commanding position in the centre of Broken Hill, the Broken Hill Trades Hall was the first building in Australia owned by unions. This Hall saw unionists battle to improve working conditions in the mines, including their first major success in 1920 when they won an Australian-first: a 35-hour week for underground workers.
Even after more than a century, the Broken Hill Trades Hall continues to serve its original purpose, with local union offices still headquartered there. It also houses an important archive of records, banners and other moveable heritage, documenting the long and active presence of the union movement in outback New South Wales.
On 23 January 2026, the World Heritage List nomination dossier was submitted to the World Heritage Centre in Paris. On 1 March 2026, the World Heritage Centre officially accepted the Workers' Assembly Halls nomination.
Heritage NSW will continue to support the project throughout 2026 and 2027 with ongoing stakeholder engagement. This includes involvement in the World Heritage Committee's Technical Evaluation Mission which is expected to occur in August/September 2026.
In July 2027, the World Heritage Committee will decide whether the Workers' Assembly Halls is to be inscribed on the World Heritage List.
See more information about the Broken Hill Trades Hall
See more information about the Worker's Assembly Halls nomination
Australian Convict Sites
We are a member of the Australian Convict Sites Steering Committee and work to protect and promote the outstanding universal values of the sites within New South Wales.
The Australian Convict Sites World Heritage Property is a series of 11 outstanding heritage places across Australia. Collectively they are representative of the global phenomenon of forced migration of convicts.
Blue Plaques
We are delivering the Blue Plaques program, which celebrates heritage by recognising noteworthy people and events from our state's history.
The program aims to capture public interest and fascination in people, events and places which form the story of New South Wales. It is inspired by the famous London Blue Plaques program, which originally started in 1866, and similar programs around the world.
M24 Midget submarine
We work with Australian Government and Japanese Government representatives to protect and manage the M24 midget submarine underwater wreck site.
This is a fascinating story of 3 midget submarines which invaded Sydney Harbour on the evening of 31 May 1942. That night, the harbour was full of Allied naval vessels and the Japanese midget submarines were on a mission to inflict maximum damage. Two of the submarines (M22 and M27) were destroyed almost immediately and recovered from Sydney Harbour within a week. The third submarine went missing. The intact wreck was discovered by divers in 2006 off Bungan Head, Newport, on Sydney's northern beaches.
The M24 was the only one of the 3 submarines that was able to launch its torpedoes that night and with terrible effect. It sank a naval vessel, HMAS Kuttabul, killing 21 men on board and injuring 10 others.