A peninsula in north-west Western Australia has been nominated for World Heritage status by federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek in recognition of the estimated 1 to 2 million sacred rock engravings there dating back 50,000 years.
If accepted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the nomination would cover an area of 100,000 hectares on the Burrup Peninsula, or Murujuga to its traditional custodians in WA’s Pilbara region.
Murujuga or Burrup Hills at Dampier Peninsula in Western Australia.Credit:Getty
Murujuga would become the second of Australia’s 20 World Heritage sites accepted for its First Nations cultural heritage, along with the Budj Bim cultural landscape and ancient aquaculture system in south-west Victoria.
The announcement was welcomed by the traditional custodians although some reiterated warnings that emissions from nearby gas processing plants are damaging one of the world’s longest unbroken sequences of rock carvings, or petroglyphs. They are demanding a contentious ban on further industrial development in the area, where gas giant Woodside plans a massive expansion to an existing gas plant.
The early engravings were made by removing a patina – a brown outer layer on the peninsula’s rocks as thin as one-thousandth of a millimetre – to reveal the contrasting underlying orange colour.
Industrial emissions including nitrogen oxides and sulphur oxides make rainfall more acidic, and some traditional custodians say this will damage the patina and damage the engravings. Expert opinion about the risk of industrial emissions is divided.
Murujuga traditional custodian Raelene Cooper, a Mardudhunera woman and former chair of the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, called for the federal government to block industrial development under Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage laws.
“We strongly support the listing process – it should have happened years ago – but we are under no illusions that this will protect areas of outstanding universal value that are directly under threat from Woodside, Perdaman and other industry expanding on Murujuga,” Cooper said.
“How can industry and the government say they support World Heritage when they’re removing rock art? How can they say they support World Heritage when they’re not supporting our rock art, our culture and our history?”
Plibersek said the rock art had been created over thousands of generations by the traditional owners and the federal government would work with Indigenous peoples to protect their cultural heritage.
“This deeply storied landscape contains a rich assemblage of tangible and intangible cultural attributes, including one of the densest and most diverse collections of petroglyphs in the world,” she said.
Plibersek has appointed an independent investigator to assess the potential threats from industrial development to Indigenous heritage under section 10 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act.
“Murujuga is a natural wonder of the world – a place for all Australians to reflect on years of continuous living culture. The cultural attributes attest to a long and continuing presence, and rich cultural connections between people, beliefs, and landscape,” she said.
Woodside operates two plants on the Burrup Peninsula to process gas from its offshore fields. It has secured approval to expand the Pluto facility to accommodate the input from the Scarborough field, which is due to enter production in 2026. Norwegian firm Yara operates plants to make ammonia and explosives from gas on the peninsula and another company, Perdaman, plans to build a fertiliser plant nearby.
Woodside said it supported the World Heritage nomination and was sponsoring initiatives to identify and protect heritage sites at Murujuga.
“Woodside collaborates with traditional custodians to ensure our heritage management processes are adequate and protect all tangible and intangible heritage values, including the outstanding universal values of the World Heritage property once these are finalised,” a spokesperson said.
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