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North West gas project threatens ancient rock art

"The gradual destruction since 1964 of the Dampier Cultural Precinct, Australia’s largest cultural monument, is unquestionably the planet’s most serious case of state vandalism in recent history. It exceeds the extent of cultural heritage destruction caused by the former Taliban regime of Afghanistan." PILBARA - 8 September, 2006. The Burrup Peninsula in the north-west of Western Australia is home to some of the oldest rock carvings on the planet, dating back tens of thousands of years. But corporate energy giant Woodside Petroleum wants to destroy much of the ancient rock artworks to build a fossil fuel plant as part of its Pluto gas project. The Burrup (Murujuga or Puratha) is the largest of the islands that make up the Dampier Archipelago. The Burrup is an area of extreme heritage value and contains the largest and most significant collections of petroglyph (rock art) galleries in the world. [Burrup Peninsula - Discussion Forum] [ Killing fields of Murujuga - PDF ] For more than 10,000 years, Aboriginal peoples of the region carved petroglyphs into the area's numerous rock faces and outcroppings. Collectively, these ancient renderings constitute the largest corpus of rock art in the world, with thousands of images of animals and people etched in stone. [The Dampier Rock Art Precinct - PDF] Murujuga was listed on the National Trust Endangered Places 2002 Register. The Dampier Rock Art Precinct has been listed as one of 100 most endangered heritage sites on earth by the World Monuments Fund. Although the rock art complex has been listed as an endangered site by the National Trust, the art has been subjected to 40 years of disturbance, exposure to greenhouse gases and dust from a major industrial complex within the perimeter of the rock art site. After inspecting Dampier rock art this August, the WA Heritage Council decided unanimously that it had the highest cultural significance. The International Rock Art Federation and Australia's National Trust nominated the site for inclusion on the National Heritage List earlier this year. The National Trust said heritage listing was needed to prevent the engravings from being "blown up" during construction or damaged later by the plant's emissions. However it's widely expected the State Government will greenlight the resource development at the expense of the artworks. Wilfred Hicks, elder of the Wong-Goo-Tt-Oo West Ngarluma, has lived in the Pilbarra since he was born. He remembers walking on the Peninsula as a child, listening to his grandfather telling the history of the rock art on the Burrup. [ Statement by Wilfred Hicks - PDF ] "It breaks our heart to see all the destroyed art, rocks and that getting ripped up all the time and blown. It is a heartbreaking feeling. It makes us older generation cry about what they're seeing happen. That is our bible. The Minghella gave that to us, and that's Lord Jesus Christ. We've got it in our mind and on sand and on rocks," said Mr Hicks. The WA Environmental Protection Authority has defended its decision to approve the development of the Pluto project. Yet the Burrup alone possibly contains a million petroglyphs of which possibly 10,000 have already been destroyed... [Murdoch: Sustainability Case study] READ MORE/Comment... Related: Fight For Rock Art... [ PETITION ]

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