#109 Cultural Economies at the Greatest Rock Art Gallery in the World
With Murujuga Traditional Custodian Clinton Walker
Clinton Walker is a Traditional Custodian of the incredible Murujuga (or Burrup Peninsula), on the north-west coast of Australia. You might recall my conversations with archaeologist Peter Veth and the co-authors of Songlines, Lynne Kelly and Margo Neale, last year. They all related back to this place – where the Songlines start, as Clinton puts it. So at the end of last year, as my family and I headed south from the Kimberley, Clinton and I met up to record a yarn for the Clean State podcast, the spin-off series from The RegenNarration specific to my home state of Western Australia, in partnership with Clean State WA. Some of you may have had a listen. It’s a shorter snappier format. But on this particular hot summer morning, with so much at stake here right now, and so much to appreciate about what he’s up to, Clinton and I settled in for an extended chat.
Clinton Walker at Murujuga (image by Susan Standen for the ABC).
“Oh, people love it. And I didn’t realise how much Australians especially had an appetite for this sort of thing. Because a lot of people realise that they never grew up understanding Aboriginal culture. You live with Aborginal people. You live on the Country that was Aboriginal peoples’ Country. With Songlines that go back tens of thousands of years and sacred sites etc. But people never saw it. They lived in a bubble.”
So here’s the rest of what we recorded together. I’ve patched in my intro from the Clean State podcast here first, to help set the scene for you:
Murujuga houses the largest rock art collection in the world – around one million petroglyphs, some dating back about 40,000 years. The World Heritage nomination for this place is a shoe-in, unless it’s jeopardised by current industry expansion plans – most notoriously, the Scarborough Gas Field proposal, currently being challenged in court and elsewhere, with the stakes running far beyond this incredible ancient place.
But there are better ways to go about things here. And Traditional Custodian Clinton Walker is uniquely placed to say. He was a highly paid technician with one of the mining companies here, but he ultimately couldn't bear the harm it was causing his Country. He now runs an extremely successful tour operation called Ngurrangga Tours, and is living the message that sustainable industries such as Indigenous cultural tourism are enormously beneficial - economically, for Country, and for bringing our cultures together. So join us, as Clinton sits us down on a very special part of his Country for that yarn.
Note: The Cultural Heritage Reform Bill has since passed the WA State Parliament, without alteration.
This conversation was recorded on Country at Murujuga National Park, on 13 December 2021.
Click on the photos below for full view, and hover over them for descriptions where they’ve been added (all pics by Anthony James).
Get more:
To hear the rest of my conversation with Clinton, tune in to episode 9 of the Clean State podcast, a spin-off series from The RegenNarration specific to Western Australia.
Clinton’s tour company - Ngurrangga Tours.
If you’d like to hear my conversations with the co-authors of Songlines: The Power & the Promise, Lynne Kelly and Margo Neale, tune into episodes 92 and 93.
And for more on the sophisticated migration of First Nations peoples to and across these lands, and the extraordinary natural-cultural value of Murujuga – and more on how to resolve the current planning issues too – tune into my chat with Peter Veth for episode 83.
Music:
Stones & Bones, by Owls of the Swamp.
Regeneration, composed by Amelia Barden, from the soundtrack of the new film Regenerating Australia.