Where is the Burrup or Dampier rock art site located?

Answer 1

The Dampier Rock Art Precinct is comprised of 42 islands, islets and rocks in a 45km radius that make up Dampier Archipelago. These are located in a remote area of the north-west of Australia, off the coast from the town of Karratha, Western Australia.

The traditional inhabitants of the Dampier Archipelago and the adjacent mainland, the Yaburrara, called its largest island Murujuga, or “hipbone sticking out.” The islands lie just off the coast of the Pilbara region of Western Australia and south of the islands of Java and Timor.Anglo settlers renamed Murujuga and its accompanying islands after William Dampier, the first European to land on the archipelago in 1699.

The Islands that make up the Dampier Rock Art Precinct are formed from a recently drowned landmass, the shorelines of which stabilised about 6000 years ago. The Burrup Peninsula, approximately 27km long and 5km wide, was originally an island that formed part of this grouping until joined to the mainland in the mid 1960s by a rail and road causeway.

The carvings that are the cultural landscape on the Burrup and throughout Dampier Rock Art Precinct may date back many thousands of years.The “archaic faces” possibly document links with an art and ritual tradition dispersed widely across the north and centre of the continent well before the drying of Australia, before at least the last glacial maximum at 20,000 years ago.

The engravings (mainly on the granophyre, though other rock types are carved), depict a range of motifs from spiritual beings, humanoids, fish, birds and mammals including some species which are now extinct, like the Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacyne). The scenes are considered to be more complex and animated than any other engravings in Australia and perhaps in the world.

Burrup has a density rate of at least 56 sites per square kilometer, with each site containing many petroglyphs. This sets the Dampier Rock Art Precinct as one of the world's pre-eminent sites of recorded human evolution and a prehistoric university.

This site is currently endangered The Australian Heritage Council completed its assessment of the site in August 2006, and recommended that it be added to World Heritage list but the Western Australian government opposed for economic reasons as Woodside Petroleum had planned to build its Pluto liquid natural gas processing in such area. Public pressure and major petitions led Woodside Petroleum to announce on November 27, 2006, that it had reversed its opposition to the National Heritage listing, with the caveat that the 6.8-kilometer area it is considering for its Pluto facility be excised from the proposed protected area. The state government dropped its opposition the following day. The environment minister’s decision on the heritage listing is expected in early 2007.☺

Answer 2

I have gone to the above site...which are suggested but these sites are not opening now.....