Murujuga World Heritage application hits the rocks over boundary issue

An application lodged by Australia earlier this year was originally deemed by UNESCO to be incomplete due to issues around map boundaries.

Rock art in the Burrup Peninsula.

Australia’s application to have the Murujuga rock art listed as a World Heritage area was almost derailed after a dispute over the area’s boundaries.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek will tell a conference in Sydney on Thursday that the World Heritage application process for Murujuga, on Western Australia’s Burrup Peninsula, had identified issues around fitting Indigenous cultural concepts into the format required for the application since it was lodged earlier this year.

Both the minister’s office and UNESCO had initially denied any issues around the state of the Murujuga application when approached by The Australian on the matter two months ago, but according to a copy of the speech Ms Plibersek will give at the International Council on Monuments and Sites general assembly in Sydney on Friday, there have been “challenges” around the World Heritage application.

“These lines of Indigenous cultural history haven’t always sat comfortably on Western maps,” Ms Plibersek will say. “And these models of Indigenous knowledge haven’t always flowed easily through Western minds.”

It is understood the application lodged by Australia earlier this year was originally deemed by UNESCO to be incomplete because of issues around map boundaries and topography.

There have since been talks between UNESCO and First Nat­ions representatives around the issue of cultural boundaries, which led to the preparation of a revised map now deemed appropriate by the World Heritage Centre.

The boundary issue means the Murujuga application may not be fully considered by ­UNESCO until the next round of applications closes next February, although the exact status of the current application is unclear.

“It’s always going to be hard for people who aren’t traditional owners to comprehend the complexities of this cultural knowledge,” Ms Plibersek will say.

“That knowledge is real and palpable and alive. But it’s often etched into the landscape, danced into the earth, sung into the wind. It’s in the pattern of the stars, but also the space between the stars. And its boundaries are not usually restricted to the land, or to rivers or to oceans. They reach out across these places, as was the case with Murujuga.”

She will say there are lessons from the Murujuga application for future Australian World Heritage applications and for the international community and global heritage bodies.

The Murujuga application covers much of the Burrup Peninsula in northwestern WA.

The area is home to more than one million pieces of ancient rock art, making it the world’s biggest petroglyph collection.

It is also home to some of Australia’s largest industrial projects and has been at the heart of an ongoing protest campaign by groups including Save Our Songlines and Disrupt Burrup Hub.

Ms Plibersek last year ordered a formal review of the wave of industrial developments both in place and proposed for the Burrup region to investigate the potential impact on the area’s cultural heritage. The findings of that review are yet to be released.