Academics rally to save Aboriginal art

Aboriginal painting at Mt Borradaile. Photo / Supplied

Australia has more ancient rock art than any other country, but half the sites could disappear in the next 50 years without better measures to document and protect them, experts warned yesterday.

Archaeologists from three universities are trying to raise funds to set up a national register of Australian rock art, some of which dates back 15,000 years. At present knowledge is fragmented, with archives kept by state and territory governments, museums, universities, national parks bodies and individual researchers.

On top of that, each Aboriginal group is responsible only for its own sites.

One of the academics behind the campaign, Paul Tacon, said: "It's extremely important to bring these diverse records together, because at the moment rock art research, conservation and management happen on an ad hoc basis. There is no central body which government, industry or Aboriginal communities can go to for information about sites in a particular area."

Tacon, a professor of archaeology and anthropology at Queensland's Griffith University, said that the estimated 100,000 sites - which are found all over the country, from the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Tasmania to urban Sydney - were under threat from industrial and urban development, graffiti, vandalism and even climate change.

"Australia has some of the most outstanding and important rock art in the world, but part of the problem is that we don't know exactly how many sites we have," he said. "Some sites have been lost because people haven't realised their importance."

Some of the most vulnerable art - which includes drawings, paintings and engravings - is in Western Australia's Pilbara region, where there has been a rapid expansion of mining in recent years. Some important sites have been destroyed, while at others the art has been carved out and moved elsewhere.

Tacon believes that Australia lacks pride in its rock art. "A lot of people are simply not aware that this is part of our national heritage and identity; it's not just something indigenous," he said. "They feel disconnected from the art and the land, so they don't have respect for the sites."

He and other academics are hoping to raise A$6 million ($7.8 million) in start-up funds, and have set up a website. They want to identify the top 100 rock art sites and use advanced technology such as laser scanning to produce 3D digital replicas.

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