History of neglect undermines us all

Opinion piece by Paul Taçon published in the Sydney Morning Herald (04/06/08): 

I am fortunate to have worked in incredible natural and cultural landscapes around the world, many of them in remote parts of Australia. I work closely with indigenous people to study rock art - paintings, drawings, engravings, stencils, prints and designs made out of beeswax - found in rock shelters, in caves, on boulders and on rock platforms, often in strikingly beautiful locations.

Across the forests of Kakadu and Arnhem Land, throughout the deserts of central Australia, within the most rugged and wild parts of Wollemi National Park near Sydney and in many other parts of the country I have documented spectacular images that tell of the past in ways excavated archaeological remains will never reveal.

Recently I visited rock engraving sites of the Pilbara region for the first time. This area contains the largest complex of engraved images in the world, ranging in age from an estimated 30,000 years old to 19th and 20th-century depictions of the first European settlers to establish homesteads in the harsh, windswept environs of this part of Western Australia. This engraved complex is a testament to thousands of years of struggle and survival, of Aboriginal people, and recently Europeans and Asians.

But now it is the rock art that struggles to survive as the hunger for the land's resources threatens to consume not just the land, but also the engravings.

In parts of the Pilbara, such as the Dampier area of the Burrup Peninsula, the landscapes have been horrifically altered and many rock-art sites destroyed. In the 1960s and 1970s Aboriginal Australian rock art was not considered as important as it is today so many sites were bulldozed. At other locations boulders with engraved designs of extinct animals, human figures and mythical beings were rounded up like sheep to be herded into compounds where they remain today. One would think that in the 21st century this would have stopped, but since 2000 the process has accelerated because of the resources and development boom which state and federal governments have encouraged.

I am not anti-mining or anti-development. Mining and development have provided us with a lifestyle - cameras, 4WDs, computers and so forth - that assists with the documentation of rock art and other aspects of cultural heritage. The problem is that there are many places where industrial development could occur in the Pilbara without affecting the rock art, standing stones and other significant places. Some might argue that by moving the boulders with rock-art heritage is saved but the art's contextual integrity is still lost.