This month we travelled from the Kimberly to the Pilbara. spinifex, red dirt, deep gorges- a land of great beauty as well as iron ore trains, massive ships coming in and out of ports, towns dependant and built on mining $, and complex infrastructure. This is extractive Australia. The mines provide jobs, housing, fuel used by employees, a good lifestyle, purpose built towns, train lines, harbours, airports, roadways.
Dampier is a mining town and also the site of the Murujuga National Park, recently World Heritage listing approved. The Dampier Archipelago “ is a haven of coral reefs, sponge gardens and more than 650 species of fish. It is also home to green, hawksbill, and flatback turtles that nest on its beaches. Dugongs, whales and dolphins have also been spotted in surrounding waters. Island wildlife includes wader birds and wallabies.” - Australia’s North West Tourism
Over 1,000,000 rock art examples have been identified on the hills of the Burrup peninsula; on the Dampier Archipelago, the most dense and diverse concentrations of petroglyphs anywhere in the world. It is thought that the artworks are over 40,000 to 50,000 years old, representing the oldest continuous record of human presence and art on Earth, Of enormous cultural significance to the traditional owners and custodians of Murujuga -the five Aboriginal groups collectively known as the Ngarda-Ngarli: the Ngarluma, Yindjibarndi, Yaburara, Mardudhunera, and Wong-Goo-Tt-Oo peoples.
In other parts of the world we pay homage to ruins of Roman roads, Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge, Lascaux caves- these are honoured and protected and are only a fraction of the age of the Murajuga petroglyphs.
Within sight of the National Park is the Woodside Karratha Gas Plant and under construction next door the Ceres Project . This is a 6 billion dollar investment by the multinational Perdaman Group. The plant will transform bi-products of Woodside’s Scarborough Gas Project into ammonia and then into urea., producing an estimated 2.3 million tonnes of urea per annum.
The scale of these projects is overwhelming. The employment and local stimulus should not be understated. The impact to the environment, the culture and the health of the workers, the town and the planet must also be considered.
It would seem that we have the mindset that this place we call Australia is ours to exploit. We allow extractive industries to operate providing they make good at the end of a mines life (a requirement almost possible to achieve) We do not put a value on the wellbeing of the environment, culture or the living conditions for future generations on a planet that is choking itself slowly.
The billions of dollars these industries generate is staggering, their influence considerable.
We watch as the ships roll into port having made their way through the archipelago to await loading with ore, gas or salt. We kayak around the harbour, I see the flames from the gas plant, I see the massive construction work to build more ports, I hear the sound of the harbour loading ships 24/7, I see the trains filled with ore I see construction villages to accomodate the 2000 workers on the build.
I walk around Murujuga. I see symbols of emu, fish, kangaroo and more. I feel these images and their makers calling to me from eons ago.
Above the rocks, a wallaby agilely navigates history and today.
“rocks located closer to industry have suffered greater degradation than those further away.”
