Patterns of Queensland’s sport and recreation heritage: enhancing community access to sport history knowledge via the Queensland Heritage Register

This presentation shares knowledge from a completed PhD study into regional Queensland sport history and heritage, and how interest in an old clay tennis court in Central Queensland led to a 2025 SLQ Heritage Register Fellowship. Sport heritage is a growing area of concern for heritage professionals internationally. With seven years until hosting the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the associated Legacy Strategy focuses on realising future sporting legacies. However, the existing Queensland Heritage Register already shares (and hides) community sporting legacies. This project explores how sport and recreation patterns in Queensland’s history and heritage are shared in existing Queensland Heritage Register entries. The research questions how heritage registers, as large open-access datasets, communicate tangible and intangible elements of sport heritage. In addition, the complexities of heritage significance assessments, threshold indicators and metadata decisions in communicating sport history are also discussed.