WA lashed over rock art heritage bid

An Australian archaeologist has slammed the WA government’s handling of the Burrup Peninsula ahead of a proposed World Heritage listing for the rock art site.

Rock art on WA’s Burrup Peninsula.

The Australian archaeologist who first identified the scientific significance and extent of the Burrup Peninsula’s rock art has slammed the West Australian government’s handling of the region ahead of a proposed World Heritage listing for the site.

Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek on Friday will officially confirm an application to have the Burrup Peninsula on WA’s northwest coast officially registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The area is home to the world’s largest collection of rock art, with an estimated 1 million petroglyphs – many of which are tens of thousands of years old – carved into the distinctive red rocks. The Burrup is also home to some of Australia’s largest industrial projects, with Woodside set to expand its LNG projects and private company Perdaman poised to begin construction shortly of a new urea plant.

Robert Bednarik, who led one of the first scientific studies of the Burrup rock art in the late 1960s and who is now the head of the International Federation of Rock Art Organisations, says the WA government’s support for those developments made a mockery of the UNESCO declaration and described the state as “the world’s worst serial offender of destroying cultural heritage”.

“That Australia has the audacity to nominate a severely threatened cultural monument for World Heritage only illustrates our arrogance further,” Mr Bednarik wrote in his submission to the federal government’s Section 10 review into the Burrup Peninsula. “I have been involved in several such nominations and have written those of three international properties. The nominators of the Dampier cultural precinct seem unaware of the preconditions for nomination.”

Looming confirmation of the heritage application – revealed by The Australian on Monday – could see the area join the Great Barrier Reef on the UNESCO list.

Ms Plibersek cited the proximity and potential impact of Clive Palmer’s Central Queensland coal project to the Reef when announcing on Wednesday the government’s decision to block the project. That was the first time the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act has been used to block a coalmine.

“The mine is an open-cut coalmine less than 10km from the Great Barrier Reef and the risk of pollution and irreversible damage to the reef is very real,” Ms Plibersek said.

In his submission, Mr Bednarik said the Burrup was the only place on the planet where a monument of world significance has to share its location with a vast industrial estate.

He said there was an “irresponsibly dense” concentration of industry in the area, arguing that nitrogen oxide emissions from the liquefied natural gas and chemical plants in the area were breaking down the patina that preserves the rock art.

The competition between industry and culture in the area, he said, was entirely the creation of inept planning by WA governments dating back to the 1960s.

“There is no doubt that if there had been proper consultation, the entire Dampier Archipelago would have been made a National Park then. The industry would have found alternative locations, and the confrontation would never have arisen,” he wrote.

“The solution to this dilemma is simple: the immovable cultural heritage, one of Australia’s greatest treasures, cannot move, nor should it; the industry can.”