Race against time to save the rocks of ages
The white outline of a human figure seems to float on the rock surface at Weelumurra, an ancient place of the Eastern Guruma people from the Pilbara region.
The white outline of a human figure seems to float on the rock surface at Weelumurra, an ancient place of the Eastern Guruma people from the Pilbara region.
Ghostly and beautiful, it lies in a rock overhang discovered two weeks ago when field staff from Fortescue Metals Group were clambering over sites destined for mining on their Solomon Hub mine. A few days later, they came across two large painted figures that seem to be dancing, so old they almost fade back into the rock.
It’s likely they reach far back into antiquity — The Australian reported last month that the same area contained caves where humans lived 47,800, and possibly 60,000, years ago.
Cave contents were subjected to optically stimulated luminescence testing by Waikato and Wollongong universities, confirming the extraordinary dates.
But in just eight weeks, Fortescue will ask West Australian Aboriginal Affairs Minister Ben Wyatt to approve a Section 18 application to mine the area, before any expert person — indigenous elder or scientist — is able to truly investigate the age or meaning of the white ghost and dancing apparitions.
Australia’s system of heritage conservation in the Pilbara mining belt, where the Juukan caves were recently blown up by Rio Tinto, consists of thousands of authorised sacrifices of ancient sites. This week, a Northern Australia parliamentary committee announced an investigation into the blasting by Rio. But it could pick any number of mines, any day, on which erasure of Australia’s prehistory and humankind’s global story is permitted.
In the case of Weelumurra, Fortescue followed proper protocols and sent details of the mysterious rock art to the Wintawari Guruma Aboriginal Corporation, on whose Eastern Guruma country Fortescue mines. Wintawari’s archaeologist, Kathryn Pryzwolnik, was glad to receive the images, captured on mobile phones. But on other sites of human prehistory, next would come state-of-the-art tools to date and record and conserve.
“The rock art is quite unlike anything else in the area,” says Pryzwolnik, who says the dancing figures are on land where permission to mine has already been granted. “Both sites appear to be pigment applied to the inner rock shelter surface, and it is possible that engraved motifs are in the sites as well. But until we’re able to get out to record the sites properly, it is the uniqueness that is most striking.”
Meanwhile, Pryzwolnik and the Eastern Guruma custodians have been given eight weeks’ grace. Four days ago, Fortescue chief executive Elizabeth Gaines told them she had asked Wyatt “to postpone his decision on the Solomon Phase 8 Section 18 application for a period of two calendar months”.
“The purpose of this pause is to allow further time for meaningful, additional on-ground consultation between Wintawari and Fortescue on the avoidance, impact minimisation and mitigation of cultural heritage.”
Gaines’s letter was in response to Wintawari’s written request a few days earlier for a moratorium on expanding mining into Weelumurra country. It urged Fortescue to “follow the lead of Rio and BHP”, which have paused their Pilbara mining operations on certain Aboriginal sites after a public outcry over the Juukan caves.
Wintawari chairman Glen Camille wrote that traditional owners were already working on 30 of 70 sites identified as having high significance.
“The first results of three of the places indicate that the
area hosts some of the Eastern Guruma’s most significant sites, potentially dating back 60,000 years, and engraving sites that portray ancient stories and songs,” he wrote.
“These results support the elders’ view that the area is highly significant … The last-minute discovery (of rock art) further demonstrates that the Aboriginal heritage work conducted to date is inadequate for this area.”
The Wintawari were given a one-year permit in October to conduct excavation work. The state’s registrar of heritage sites, who issues permits to custodians to study their own country, also received a letter from Fortescue listing its preferred number and order of site excavations.
Gaines told The Weekend Australian the two new rock art finds were in areas Fortescue did not plan to mine, and Aboriginal excavation work “remains a priority focus and will continue beyond the two-month pause”.
“Through its agreements, Fortescue has funded ethnographic surveys across more than 2.4 million hectares of land in the Pilbara and funded 240,000ha of archaeological surveys,” she says.
But Wintawari’s native title manager, Aaron Rayner, says Fortescue has not provided any details about how sites will be protected from mining operations. A former government heritage officer, Rayner says mining agreements bring compensation and jobs. But they also curtail the legal rights of traditional owners to protect their cultural heritage.
He says he is alarmed by comments from Wyatt that the government should withdraw from decisions on heritage and leave native title groups “to make commercial agreements with land users”. “Is he saying places which are significant to West Australian, Australian and human history be managed privately and confidentially, without government oversight and behind closed doors?” Rayner says. “Leaving heritage preservation to mining companies is not an ideal scenario.”
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