Recently I visited rock engraving sites of the Pilbara region for the first time.   This part of Australia contains the largest complex of engraved images in the entire world, ranging in age from an estimated 30,000 years ago to 19^th and 20^th 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.  In different ways they all lived off the resources of the land and in the rock art aspects of this struggle have been depicted.

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 themselves.  In parts of the Pilbara, such as the Dampier area of the Burrup Peninsula, the landscapes have already been horrifically altered and many rock art sites destroyed.  In the 1960s and 70s 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 21^st Century this would have stopped but since 2000 the process has accelerated because of the resources and development boom state and federal governments have encouraged.

I am not anti-mining or anti-development.  After all, mining and development have provided us with a lifestyle that assists with the documentation of rock art and other aspects of cultural heritage – cameras, 4WDs, computers, etc.    The problem is that there are many places where industrial development could occur in the Pilbara without impacting on rock art, standing stones and other significant places.   Some might argue that by moving boulders with rock art heritage is saved but the art’s contextual integrity is still lost.  It no longer is in landscape context and images purposely clustered together to illustrate aspects of meaning are now randomly grouped.  For instance, a series of boulders with bird, kangaroo or even horse tracks no longer form a trail integral to the interpretation of a site complex.

Australia has at least 100,000 rock art sites, more than any other country in the world.  This is part of the problem: there are so many sites that it is impossible to document and protect all of them.  Each year dozens of sites are destroyed by bush fires, vandalism, environmental degradation and development.  Most recently, one of my favourite rock painting sites in the Northern Territory’s Keep River National Park was irreparably damaged by fire.  And ironically, within Australia more money has been spent in recent years destroying or contributing to the destruction of sites than that spent on studying, documenting and conserving rock art for future generations.  Once lost, rock art sites are gone forever.  Less money is also spent within Australia on rock art research than in South Africa and Kenya, both of which have national rock art institutions, something Australia is still yet to even consider.

Perhaps it is time a national rock art research centre devoted to the study, documentation, conservation and management of this priceless aspect of Australian and World Heritage be established.  Perhaps it is time consultant archaeologists across the country refused to move rock art or otherwise destroy rock art sites while working for industry.  Perhaps it is time government and big business worked together to harvest resources and undertake development is more sustainable ways, ways that will protect both cultural and natural heritage.  Australian rock art is important because it illustrates not only Aboriginal history but also that of European and Asian settlers.   Australian rock art is a significant part of world heritage and each region of Australia is special in its own way.  The Pilbara assemblage is both highly remarkable and unique but much of it has not even been documented.  Certainly it is time Australia stood up for contemporary Indigenous Australians but perhaps it is time we also better respected the achievements of their ancestors.