Irreplaceable Indigenous rock art at a site in remote Western Australia has been vandalised with graffiti, treated with contempt by outsiders, and placed under threat by an invasive weed, an inquiry has heard.



Murujuga, commonly known as the Burrup peninsula near Karratha, holds the largest concentration of ancient rock art in the world – 2,500 registered Aboriginal heritage sites.

The art depicts the oldest known images of the human face, and shows extinct megafauna, Indigenous hunting traditions, Tasmanian tigers, mathematical representations and geometric forms.

A Senate inquiry is currently investigating the impact of a new ammonium nitrate plant, run by the Norwegian fertiliser company Yara International.



Prof John Black warned that emissions from the plant would cause microbial growth on the rock surfaces, destroying their “desert varnish” and placing the art at serious risk.

Black provided damning evidence to the inquiry that three CSIRO reports used to justify Yara’s plant were flawed “in terms of scientific methods, analyses and/or interpretations”.

The inquiry continued on Thursday, hearing from the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, which incorporates the Ngarluma people, the Mardudhunera people, the Yaburara people, the Yindjibarndi people and the Wong-goo-tt-oo people.

The chief executive officer of Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, Craig Bonney, said he had received no briefings from the CSIRO or the government on the threat posed by the plant. He said Yara International had not approached him with information either.

Bonney described other threats to Murujuga, including from visitors who failed to respect the land.

He said campers had recently entered Murujuga and created a giant slide down the sand dunes, using water pumped from the ocean.

“It looked like something that most of us would enjoy doing, but not in our country, and not in that place,” Bonney said. “No prosecution of course, no one’s ever been prosecuted for anything on Murujuga.”

Indigenous rock art in Murujuga, commonly known as the Burrup peninsula. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

The Karratha City mayor, Peter Long, said there had been instances of vandalism and graffiti of the rock art. Previous reports have suggested people have spray-painted rocks, slashed their names into the surface or chipped off art to sell online.

He said a dominant weed, the passiflora, was “going mad” in the area, posing a major problem for the rock art site.

Long said more money needed to be invested to manage Murujuga. He expressed concerns about further plans to open up the northern part of the Murujuga national park. He said an access gate was needed, and called for the funding of two full-time rangers at the site.

Friends of Australian Rock Art also warned of increasing reports of vandalism and graffiti at the site by the fly-in fly-out workforce, and said it had witnessed the bulldozing of rocks for industrial development.

The Greens senator Rachel Siewert, who is on the committee, said the evidence of threats to the site was “disturbing”.

“It’s very useful for us to hear that evidence, because it’s not been drawn to people’s attention a lot,” she said.

Yara’s submission to the inquiry states that it has taken steps to ensure its facility does not threaten the rock art.



It said it had a strict monitoring regime around the facility, while independent monitoring of the rock art was conducted on a regular basis.

The company said three air-quality stations were located around the plant, and were subject to the scrutiny of the CSIRO, with oversight from the Burrup rock art technical working group.

But the inquiry last month uncovered problems with the air quality monitoring regime. The company had failed to install two total suspended particulates monitors at the plant, and were forced to indefinitely delay operations.

There has been a push for the state government to support a world heritage application for the area, which has been on the national heritage register since 2007.