Alan Watchman

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COALITIONNo. 10, July 2005Sea. Open-cut mines were developed in the1960s and railway lines were built totransport the iron ore to deep water ports.Depuch Island was selected as a suitable portlocation and the Western Australian Museumconducted an impact study of the island.After finding an extensive array of petroglyphsthe Museum recommended that developmentof the site not proceed. Instead loadingfacilities were built at Dampier despite thepresence of much more rock art in the vicinityof the Dampier facilities than on DepuchIsland.yet it does not have World Heritage status. Aninventory of the rock art has not beencompiled. There has been no regularmonitoring of rock art sites and no ongoingresearch. Federal and State governments havenot been concerned about the stability orprotection of the petroglyphs, and there is noplan of management for the region (Bednarik,2002).The reason that the rock art is now in publicfocus is because further gas and chemicalplants are planned for construction and therock art will once again be impacted. Thechemical plants will produce nitrogen andsulphur oxides, and ammonia gas emissionsand these artificial by-products may enhancethe deterioration of the petroglyphs. In 2004 astudy of the chemical effects on the surfaceof the rock art was commenced (MacLeod,2005), but the planned development is likelyto proceed for economic reasons.Figure 1. Example of rock carving on the Burrup Peninsula.Courtesy Robert BednarikIn the 1980s and following the discovery ofthe North West Shelf natural gas reserves atreatment plant and loading facilities werebuilt on a small part of the Burrup Peninsula.During that development some petroglyphswere destroyed and others moved to a fencedcompound. Little conservation work wasundertaken and limited recordings were made.No scientific investigations of weathering anddeterioration were carried out.Figure 2. Rock art of the Burrup Peninsula. Courtesy RobertBednarikThe Burrup Peninsula contains hundreds ofthousands of figures and may be the largestconcentration of petroglyphs in the world andFigure 3. Recent rock carving on the Burrup Peninsula. CourtesyRobert BednarikThe scope of the research involves modellingthe predicted and known ground level ambientconcentrations and the deposition rates ofnitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and ammoniafrom the existing and proposed industrial andshipping sources. The mineralogy andchemistry of the rock types will be studiedwith the aim of determining the natural andpossible accelerated weathering rates. Othertopics of study include the examination ofcolour and physical changes to theengravings, the microclimate, atmosphericdeposition and microbiological activity. Areport is expected from the researchmanagement committee in 2007.Part of the scientific study is being undertakenby research teams that do not have priorexperience with rock art conservation. Some15
COALITIONNo. 10, July 2005conservation scientists are involved inmanaging the project and this should ensurethat appropriate recommendations are made.The major concern is that more petroglyphswill be physically and chemically damaged tothe extent that they will be lost from thecultural heritage record.WildfiresAs in many dry countries, the damage causedby wildfires not only affects infrastructure andpeople’s lives, but also rock art. During recentyears in Australia, and particularly along theeast coast wildfires have wreakedconsiderable damage to property and naturalareas. In January 2000, a wildfire sweptacross the Australian Capital Territory andburnt many homes in Canberra. The fire alsoseverely damaged the Rendezvous Creek rockart location in Namadgi National Park(Watchman et al., 1995; Watchman, 2003). Awooden viewing platform had been builtwithin a domed granite tor to protect thearchaeological deposit and to minimize dustfrom tourist traffic. The localized heat fromthe burning of the platform generated severestresses within the existing weathered surfaceand large areas of adjacent rock spalled off.shelter is now part of the current managementstrategy.DustAn additional problem at that site and manyothers is the gradual accumulation of dustfrom natural sources, such as wind blownparticles, and animal and occasional humanfoot traffic (Watchman, 2002). Oftenindigenous people painted those stable rocksurfaces and now a dust film partly obscuresthe paintings. The cleaning of the surfaces isnot generally undertaken, and it has onlypreviously been carried out once before(Haskovec, 1990). The removal of theaccumulating dust on the Rendezvous Creekpaintings is not a conservation or managementpriority. Dust removal is also not a highpriority at other locations.Figure 5. View of the dark dusty surface at Rendezvous Creekrock shelter showing the red and partly obscured white paintingsFigure 4. Entrance to the Rendezvous Creek rock shelter showingthe large spalled blocks that collapsed during the intense burningof the wooden viewing platform (shown by the blue plastic sheet)Additional cracking occurred and new strainsinitiated in the granite. Most of the paintingswere relatively unaffected because they wereat the back of the shelter and distant from theburning platform. The managers are focusingon erecting in the shelter another woodenstructure similar to the previous one, but otheroptions include building a metal viewingplatform and closing the site to touristsbecause of potential instability. The regularmonitoring of the walls and ceilings of theOne success story occurred at the Split Rocksite in north Queensland where conservationscience established that dust particles fromthe unpaved road nearby were settling on rockpaintings (Watchman, 1998). A result of thatresearch and because of pressure on thegovernment the laying of asphalt paving overseveral kilometers of road either side of therock art site eliminated the dust problem.Current ResearchWhile some rock art research is underway inAustralia there is not as much as in the past.The Burrup Peninsula case is one majorproject. Bruce Ford, a graduate of the jointGetty Conservation Institute and University ofCanberra Rock Art Conservation course(Stanley Price, 1990, 1991), is studying thegrowth rate of lichen in rock shelters andinvestigating novel ways to control theirspread (Ford, 2005). His work in a remote16
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Alan Watchman

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