History is being destroyed in slow-motion
Wed 28 May 2025 00.00 AEST
The Murujuga Rock Art is a unique 40,000-year-old collection of rock engravings on the Dampier Archipelago in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
These irreplaceable petroglyphs are twice as old as France’s Lascaux cave paintings and eight times older than the pyramids. Murujuga is nationally heritage-listed and could soon be recognised by UNESCO for its world heritage value.
But it is facing destruction from acid rain caused by nearby gas processing. Gas processing that does not need to happen at Murujuga.
The new Australian Environment Minister Murray Watt, however, decided to approve a 50-year extension to Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project.
This could have devastating consequences for the rock art.
Featuring:
+ Dr Benjamin Smith, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Western Australia
+ Dr Ken Mulvaney, Archaeologist
+ Raelene Cooper, Mardudhunera Traditional Custodian
+ Esther Joy Montgomery, Aboriginal Elder
+ Tracey Moffatt, Acclaimed Australian Artist Fiona Hall, Acclaimed Australian Artist
A video report presented by Stephen Long, Senior Fellow, and Contributing Editor at the Australia Institute on Ngarluma land.
Cinematography and editing by Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer at the Australia Institute.
Last week’s Budget gives some insight into how the federal government intends to regulate logging of native forests going forward, setting aside millions in public funds to “progress a landscape-scale approval pathway for jurisdictions with RFAs”. This signals the government is planning for native forest logging to continue.
Budgets are not communications exercises. They are statements of priorities, the most literal answer a government can give to the question: what do we value? Ask that of the 2026–27 federal budget, and the answer, for nature, for Australia's irreplaceable native species, for the ecosystems that took millions of years to evolve on this continent and exist nowhere else on Earth, is clear. Nature is not a priority.
