WHC-99/CONF.204/INF.7 UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE CONVENTION BUREAU OF THE WORLD HERITAGE COMMITTEE 23rd session (5 - 10 July 1999) Paris (France) EVALUATIONS OF CULTURAL PROPERTIES Prepared by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) The IUCN and ICOMOS evaluations are made available to members of the Bureau and the World Heritage Committee. A small number of additional copies are also available from the secretariat. Thank you. 1999 Mountains and down to the valley floors. Both rock art and Greater Blue Mountains (Australia) tracks are intact and authentic. The exceptional circumstances of the Greater Blue Mountains are the scale, intensity, and longevity of the No 917 cultural association. It is a place where ancient custodianship over the million hectares of dissected plateaux has been replaced by another, more recent, form of custodianship, significant nonetheless. The intense inter-relationship of nature and people over tens of thousands of years make the Greater Blue Mountains a Identification classic example of the nature-culture continuum, which has exercised the minds of the World Heritage Committee over Nomination The Greater Blue Mountains Area recent years and was given expression in its Global Strategy meeting of March 1998. Cultural criterion vi Location State of New South Wales State Party Australia Category of property Date 30 June 1998 In terms of the categories of cultural property set out in Article 1 of the 1972 World Heritage Convention, this is a site. Note This property is nominated under both natural and History and Description cultural criteria as a mixed site. In this evaluation only that History information from the dossier relating to nomination under the cultural criteria are taken into account. Aboriginal people have occupied this region for at least 14,000, and possibly 22,000, years, leaving traces of their presence in occupation sites and rock paintings and engravings. They have exploited and at the same time cared for its natural resources, from which they have also drawn Justification by State Party spiritual sustenance. The Greater Blue Mountains nominated area represents an Bands from the three language groups (Gundungarra, Daruk, extraordinary story of natural antiquity, diversity, beauty, and and Darkinjung) were attached to defined territories within human attachment. the region. Their frequent social and ceremonial gatherings are recorded in the rock art. Accounts by colonists of early Within a continent settled over millennia by indigenous encounters with these people emphasize their powerful peoples, this protected area is rich in evidence of the cultural physique, adapted to the rugged terrain in which they lived. continuity of its Aboriginal occupants and their artistic and spiritual expression. The landscape is scattered with British colonization began on the coast near what is now dreaming sites and rock art. For 18th and 19th century Sydney in 1788 and numerous attempts were made to cross British colonists, the Blue Mountains were simultaneously a this formidable natural barrier. In 1814 a route was set up challenging barrier to the inland and a spectacular wild along the Aboriginal pathway on the ridge between the country. Explorers crossed the mountains with difficulty and Grose and Cox’s rivers, through the centre of the area now convict labour followed, constructing a road to western being nominated. European settlers quickly began to move pastoral lands. This ridge-line route, and subsequent railway across it and appropriated for grazing their stock fertile areas line, formed the spine for a series of townships, with that had been kept clear by the Aboriginal people to economic reliance on mining, health promotion, and encourage wallabies and kangaroos. This disrupted a key recreation for Sydney dwellers, associated with access to the element of Aboriginal food supply and led to tensions surrounding wild scenery. between the two communities. The rugged upland country of the Greater Blue Mountains is These tensions led to a state of war in the eastern part of the not only of exceptional natural diversity, and of spectacular Blue Mountains, and a punitive expedition sent from Sydney and ephemeral beauty, but is also closely tied to the lives of in 1816 resulted in the massacre of a number of Aborigines. people who have occupied, visited, thought about, and cared As a consequence they adopted new strategies for survival for it over thousands of years. The property represents, in utilizing resources from the settlers’ economy while fact, the combined works of man and nature. maintaining their own economy as far as possible. The direct and tangible association with the million hectares European settlement grew steadily, especially after the 1861 of wild country is expressed in two physical forms. First are Crown Lands Alienation Act. Small holdings became the widespread Aboriginal occupation sites, rock-shelter widespread in the valley lands and the settlers established paintings, and rock-platform engravings. Second is the good relationships with the Aboriginal communities. Certain narrower network of historic walking tracks, staircases, and lands were excluded from the provisions of the Act and those lookouts, festooned from the edges of the ridge crossing the that followed for public recreation, catchment protection, or forest reserves. 1 In the 1850s a railway line was built, on the same ridge route between 3000 and 1000 years ago. It was still being as the road, and this attracted a new form of settlement: the produced at the time of European contact after 1788. No country estates of professional men who did not need to technique is available for dating the rock platform make a living from the land. Tourism became common and engravings, but on stylistic grounds they are considered to be townships encouraged the building of guesthouses for contemporary with the paintings. visitors who made use of the many walking tracks that were The engravings sites are to be found on relatively horizontal developed. The region has been the most significant centre stone platforms. More than half of them are on ridgelines; for tourists from the Sydney region ever since that time. they are rare in valley bottoms. The average number of Mining also began in the Blue Mountains. Many small mines engravings is ten, but there are four sites with over a were set up in the 1860s to exploit coal, shale, and other hundred, at Burragurra and Frying Pan Rock. minerals, but the deposits were not extensive and the rough By contrast, the rock shelters are more profusely decorated: settlements that grew up round the mines were quickly the average number of motifs is 25, whilst the largest abandoned. (Swinton’s) has more than 850 and eight contain over 200. Farming and urban development continued throughout the The shelters are mostly on hill slopes, the remainder being early 20th century, but at the same time efforts were made to equally divided between ridges and valley bottoms. Most of preserve the natural environment of the Mountains. In the the designs are either drawn or painted directly on the early 1950s the smaller reserves created by local authorities surface of the back wall, and less commonly on the ceilings were amalgamated to form the Blue Mountains National or inside lips of the overhang. The paintings are Park. Since that time more National Parks and protected predominantly monochrome; black predominates, followed areas have been created in the region. by white, red, and yellow. The choice of colour varies significantly between different areas. Recently the Gundungarra and Daruk people have set up local Tribal Councils to reunite the Aboriginal people of the Many of the decorated shelters have produced evidence of region. human occupation. It is likely that most of the sites were occupied, but the evidence is below the surface and can only Description be revealed by excavation. [The ICOMOS evaluation does not include a general description of the entire region proposed for inscription, since this is covered by the IUCN evaluation. The section Management and Protection that follows concentrates on the rock art of the Great Blue [This aspect of the nominated property will be covered in Mountains.] detail in the IUCN evaluation.] Nearly 700 Aboriginal sites have been recorded in the All the land within the nominated area is public land, vested Greater Blue Mountains area, and 40% of these have an art in the State of New South Wales (NSW). With the exception component of the Jenolan Caves Reserve, which is a karst conservation The rock art of the region occurred in two distinct social reserve, the entire area is protected as national parks contexts. Through stylistic behaviour the people of the established under the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Act region, who were not in continuous verbal contact with one 1974. They are under the control and management of the another, were able to communicate important social Director-General of the NSW National Parks and Wildlife messages and demonstrate both broad group cohesion and Service. intra-group distinctiveness. It has been studied since the Management plans are in force or in preparation for all the beginning of the present century and it was the subject of the parks, consistent with the NSW National Parks and Wildlife first quantitative archaeological analysis of any corpus of Service’s Field Management Policies. Among their Aboriginal art in Australia in 1965. objectives are the preservation of Aboriginal sites and The rock art occurs in rock shelters and on open sandstone historic features, for which detailed guidelines are laid down platforms; paintings and engravings are found together on in the Field Management Policies. There is a policy laid the shelters, but the platforms have only engravings. down for consulting Aboriginal communities on all matters that relate to their heritage and way of life. The Blue Mountains rock art is dominated by tracks or figurative motifs.