Australia - Murujuga Cultural Landscape

The Traditional Custodians of Murujuga, the Ngarluma, Yindjibarndi, Yaburara, Mardudhunera and Wong-Goo-Tt-Oo groups, collectively referred to as Ngurra-ra Ngarli, have taken the lead in proposing the Murujuga Cultural Landscape for inclusion on Australia’s World Heritage Tentative List. Ngurra-ra Ngarli, represented by the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, have prepared this Tentative List Submission in partnership with the Western Australian Government and with the support of the Australian Government.

Murujuga, the Aboriginal traditional name for the Dampier Archipelago and surrounds, including the Burrup Peninsula, is located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. When the Ngurra-ra Ngarli talk about Murujuga, they talk about Land and Sea Country, which consists of a narrow peninsula of land extending approximately 22 kilometres from the mainland, a group of 42 islands, islets and rocks and the surrounding sea up to 40 kilometres from the port of Dampier (Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation 2016). With more than one million images in an area of more than 37,000 hectares, Murujuga is home to one of the most significant and diverse collections of petroglyphs[1] in the world which documents the transition of an arid maritime cultural landscape through time (McDonald 2015, Mulvaney 2015, McDonald et al. 2018). Murujuga has the densest known concentration of hunter-gatherer petroglyphs anywhere in the world (Jo McDonald Cultural Heritage Management 2011, Australian Heritage Council 2012, Mulvaney 2015).