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ABORIGINAL SITES - Western Australia

Burrup Peninsula, WA

"The Burrup," as the locals call it, is the site of hundreds of thousands of Aboriginal rock engravings that are distributed over an area of 88 sq. km, and to see them necessitates some four-wheeled means of transport. Situated 28 kilometres northwest of Karratha the peninsula - once an island - takes its name from its highest hill, Mt. Burrup. The former island was connected with the mainland by a causeway for a railway line and a road in 1979.
The rock art ranges from small engravings of Emu tracks to very large ones representing a corroborree or ceremony, and even Aboriginal figures climbing a ship's mast. They depict a Tasmanian tiger, whales, kangaroos, emus and thousands of Aboriginal ceremonies. The artwork done here by Aboriginals will stun you. But sadly, the people are long gone, so that no-one will ever know what the engravings really represent. The Jaburara people who once lived here have been wiped out.
The Burrup Peninsula came into worldwide focus in 2003 when the World Monuments Fund listed the area on the top 100 most endangered heritage places on the planet - as the only Australian site. Much of the surviving rock are remains under threat from a six proposed gas processing plants on the peninsula. In 2006 debate over the Burrup peninsula and its rock engravings intensified. For a long time the West Australian Government along with Woodside Energy Ltd opposed a heritage listing of this "prehistoric university". Politicians claimed that heritage listing the area would be an "economic catastrophe" and any heritage listing would not go ahead without concessions to the energy industry.
Woodside manages a $20 billion venture over a liquefied natural gas plant (LNG), which currently provides almost two-thirds of WA's gas supply and export. But Woodside's plans included the expansion of their own business with a new 6.8sq km LNG facility on the Burrup peninsula occupying 2.5% of the National Park. When the federal government announced National Heritage listing for the Peninsula on July 3rd, 2007 it explicitly excluded the Woodside lease.
Finding these engravings is not easy; you'll have to develop a sense of where they might be. Look for evenly formed rock surfaces either lying horizontally or standing vertically which might give a good ground to work on. Mostly they overlook a certain area. But the best way is to go with local knowledge: local tours are conducted and are well working taking.

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