The table illustrates the number of people who visited different World Heritage sites in Australia in 1996, 1998 and 2000.
Overall, it can be seen that while the number of people who visited the Great Barrier Reef, Blue Mountains, Tasmania Wilderness and Shark Bay experienced an upward trend, the figure for Central Eastern Rainforest Reserve and Macquarie Island decreased. Another noticeable point is that the figure for the Great Barrier Reef was the highest among the areas throughout the period. In addition, the visitors to Macquarie Island accounted for an insignificant part of the total number of tourists to Australia.
Regarding the Great Barrier Reef, there was a significant increase in the number of visitors, from 1,670,000 in 1996 to 2,950.000 in 1998, before increasing to 3,200,000 in 2000. Blue Mountains ranked third in terms of the number of visitors, which witnessed a slight rise from 526,000 to 581,000 over the period of 4 years, while the figure for Tamania Wilderness showed a similar trend, increasing from 450,000 in 1906 to 475,000 in 1998, before climbing to 483,000 in 2000. In 1996, Shark Bay received 84,000 visitors. This figure saw a noticeable increase to a peak of 102,000 in 1998, before declining to 89,000 by the year 2000.
By contrast, the number of tourists in Central Eastern Rainforest Reserve dropped steadily, at a rate of roughly 20000 per two years, reaching 770,000 in 2000. As for Macquarie Island, a slight fall was witnessed in this figure to a trough of 310, before rising to 330 in 2000.