Heavy industry, acid rain, graffiti threaten 50,000-year-old Aboriginal rock carvings

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“The number of petroglyphs is estimated to be between 500,000 and one million. The National Trust claims that about 10,000 of them have been destroyed in the last 44 years.

“The artwork done here by Aboriginals will stun you.

“For Aboriginal people the rock art is a tangible expression of their people’s ancestral knowledge. They are of profound importance to the local Ngarada people. But sadly, the people are long gone, so that no-one will ever know what the engravings really represent. The Jaburara people who once lived here have been wiped out.

“It’s unbelievable that industrial development can destroy one of the largest Aboriginal rock engraving sites in the world.”

 The Western Australian government has now formally committed to pursuing world heritage status for the Burrup Peninsula.

A Senate report warning of damage to the 50,000-year-old treasures has persuaded the state government to act.

'It comes five months after a Senate inquiry report into managing the site warned that the cumulative emissions from heavy industry on the peninsula, centred on the north-west shelf gas project, could be damaging the surface of the rock art and causing it to degrade.

The step towards nomination has been welcomed by rock art experts, who say it is one of the most significant archaeological sites in the southern hemisphere.

“The thing that is unique about this is that it covers almost the entire origin of the north-west coast of Australia, and it is hunter-gatherers from the bottom to the top,” director of the University of Western Australia’s centre for rock art research and management, Jo McDonald, said.

“Nowhere else has it covered 50,000 years of hunter-gatherer human history.”

Stand Up for the Burrup

'Yesterday the first step was taken in the process of gaining UNESCO World Heritage Protection for Murujuga (The Burrup) 'Congratulations to all involved in the negotiations with the WA state government to make an application for listing on the register.

This page Thanks everyone for their support, interest, and actions in keeping this issue alive through, at times, great difficulty.

This is just the beginning, and has taken 20+years to get this far it is hoped it will not take 20 more.'

www.facebook.com/StandUpForTheBurrup

‘The rocks remember’:

The fight to protect Burrup peninsula's rock art

'As the WA government pushes for world heritage listing of the sacred site, traditional owners warn of the threat of heavy industry, acid rain and graffiti.'

'Deep Gorge, like much of the Burrup, is a sacred men’s site, dangerous to enter for the uninitiated. A Ngarluma marni, a symbol made of stacked half-circles, marks it as a Ngarluma place.

Twin emu tracks, carved into either sides of the gorge, mark the entrance.

'Above them is a shaky-looking arrow carved by a non-Indigenous visitor with an irrepressible urge to imitate what cannot be imitated – the practice and performance of one of the oldest living cultures on earth. This particular arrow was drawn in 2016,
but rangers from the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation (MAC), an association of five traditional owner groups, the Ngarluma, Mardudhunera, Yaburara, Yindjibarndi people and Wong-Goo-Tt-Oo peoples, say they discover fresh graffiti all the time.

'Brandon Lockyer, Ngarluma man, is one of the six MAC rangers. He sings out to the country when we arrive, telling it, in a mixture of Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi, that we will not harm this place and this place should not harm us:

“Ancestors, we all come here. These people, they come here to learn the country, to walk here. Don’t follow! Don’t grab them! Are you listening to me? Stay where you are. We are not coming here to make trouble.”

'The rangers keep a digital catalogue of every petroglyph on the peninsula and the 42 islands of the Dampier archipelago, and are constantly discovering new images.

'“I have been coming here since I was 17,” MAC chief executive Peter Jeffries says. “When I come here now, and have a look, sometimes I think: oh, I’ve never seen that before.”