Ancient Aboriginal rock art at risk
Source: AFP July 25, 2008 She said the threat to the art has intensified in recent years as mining and energy companies drain the region of iron ore, natural gas and other resources to feed the huge demand for raw materials from Asia. Smalldon cites the removal of rock art from the area by energy producer Woodside Petroleum to build a new liquified natural gas (LNG) plant, as an indicator of how industrial development threatens the works. “Archaeologists, anthropologists, Aboriginal people " we all said ‘no don’t do it’,” she said. Woodside said it tried to avoid rock engravings when it designed its Burrup LNG Park but that 170 boulders containing art which could not be avoided were moved to nearby natural settings with the guidance of indigenous custodians.
“No rock art was damaged or destroyed during this process and the relocated boulders are now indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape,” a spokesman for the company told AFP.
But Smalldon is unimpressed.
“It’s like saying Stonehenge is a round circular site, let’s remove two of the stones,” she said.
“You’re removing a percentage of the rock art and therefore reducing the significance of it. You’ve got to think of it as the Aboriginal people think of it " as a whole. They see it as a place, they don’t see it as individual rock art.”
Smalldon has taken other affronts in her explorations over the past seven years including crude graffiti scratched into rocks bearing thousand-year-old images and construction camps built around sacred Aboriginal men’s sites.
" Industrial development “an enormous blunder’ "
Part of the problem is the lack of management for the art works which are scattered over 88 square kilometres around the peninsula some 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) north of Perth.
The government placed the Burrup rock art on the National Heritage List in mid-2007 but as yet there are no fenced-off areas and no walkways to guide visitors to the sites where kangaroos, echidnas and other native fauna roam wild.
Aboriginal middens, the dumping grounds for the remains of shellfish eaten by local tribes which provide a rich source of material for archaeologists, have been trampled by unsuspecting visitors.
The road into the peninsula has a gas pipeline along one side, while the Burrup Fertiliser factory lies close to important pieces.
People wanting to view the rock art must scramble over boulders for a vantage point and the only nod to authority is a small sign asking visitors to “Please help preserve this site for the future”.
“It’s just so sad,” said Smalldon. “There has been no management for this archaeology to date.
“Anywhere with this level of significance, heritage of this significance, you would have management in place, in my opinion. Somewhere equivalent like Stonehenge or Kakadu " all of those places have management in place.”
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