Through the Queensland Heritage Trails Network, 43 major projects across rural and regional Queensland received funding to significantly upgrade and conserve existing cultural facilities or build new facilities. Some projects received further funding from sponsors and others have received significant in-kind support from their local council.

The Queensland Heritage Trails Network is the only major rural and regional project funded through the Centenary of Federation initiative encompassing 27 communities across Queensland. The establishment of the Network represents a major cultural heritage initiative of the Queensland Government, who is working in partnership with the Commonwealth Government and regional communities throughout the State.

The Network aims to preserve and promote the State's natural, indigenous and cultural heritage and develop educational resources, create jobs, stimulate development and foster tourism. Arts, culture and tourism have become vehicles for reconstructing the external image of rural towns, stimulating physical and environmental renewal and attracting investment in new industries.

The benefits of the Network approach include:

• building long term sustainability of heritage projects in relation to the economic and cultural values they represent to the communities that have responsibility for each Network project;
• using collaboration and partnerships to afford resource sharing, savings and greater audience reach;
• utilising community expertise and support in development of the Network, leading to sustainable jobs and diverse tourism opportunities;
• empowering communities to take ownership of their projects to showcase their rich heritage;
• preserving, interpreting and telling the story of a place and the people who occupied it reinforcing regional and local identity, there by providing an important element of community stability;
• enhancing the preservation and interpretation of the State's cultural heritage by utilising the creative and educational possibilities of new media and exhibition design to provide a sensitive context for artefacts, images and stories that will lead visitors to think and search further;
• creating employment opportunities in regional centres through the development of cultural heritage tourism;
• diversifying the economic base of regions;
• developing and retaining specialist trade/skills in regional areas that enhance the cultural heritage value of destinations (tourism management, conservation skills, hospitality skills, commercial and retailing, accommodation and new product development); and
• developing training programs for cultural heritage workers.

integrate places and sites into a marketable network for tourism;
• enable the preservation of a wide spread of historic sites and places through application of essential capital works;
• provide for the maintenance of heritage places, which are currently redundant in terms of their former uses, by introducing new uses which highlight the history of the place for current community needs such as the Ipswich Global Arts Link; and
• link other government initiatives, such as the Museums Resource Centre partnerships between Arts Queensland and local government consortia; the Cultural Tourism Strategy and the Self-Drive Strategies of Tourism Queensland; and the programs of the National Heritage Trust and the Environmental Protection Agency to deliver more effective cultural heritage outcomes.