Industrial development has a direct impact on cultural features, such as petroglyphs, through construction

There are also indirect impacts, such as vandalism, as the Dampier Archipelago becomes more accessible and visitor numbers increase.

In the mid 1960s the township of Dampier was established with the development of port facilities at Parker Point and East Intercourse Island, and later on Mistaken and Mid Intercourse Islands, for exporting iron ore from the Hamersley Ranges. A causeway was built across the tidal mudflats, connecting Dampier Island with the mainland and forming what is now known as the Burrup Peninsula. A salt production industry was also established. No one knows the extent of damage to Aboriginal cultural heritage in the course of these constructions.

Archaeological investigation in the Dampier Archipelago goes back to the late 1960s. Robert Bednarik began recording sites in 1968 while he was working for a mining company based in Dampier. He recorded hundreds of sites, travelling the whole of the Burrup on foot. Most of his work is as yet unpublished. In the early 1970s F.L.Virili, project engineer for Dampier Salt, also recorded rock art in the area. In 1977, he published a description of several significant complexes from Dampier Island and some of the other islands. Some of these have hundreds of petroglyphs and are rich in other cultural remains. Gum Tree Valley and Kangaroo Valley for example form a site complex more than 1km long, including a wide range of petroglyphs, in varying styles and techniques, and all stages of weathering, as well as camp sites with large shell middens and artefacts, stone arrangements and grinding patches.

In 1970, the Department of Aboriginal Sites (DAS) was established within the Western Australian Museum to take responsibility to record and protect Aboriginal sites, and in 1972 the Parliament of Western Australia passed the Aboriginal Heritage Act. Members of staff recorded further sites, including several on Gidley Island and also encouraged Virili in his recording efforts. The shell midden at Skew Valley was excavated in 1974 by DAS staff member Robert Bevacqua. Subsequently, French archaeologist Michel Lorblanchet conducted further excavations at the Skew Valley midden and made detailed records of the Gum Tree Valley site complex. Aboriginal beliefs about the petroglyphs of Dampier Archipelago were also recorded at this period by DAS anthropologist Kingsley Palmer.

In 1978, the area became the focus of development of the North-West Shelf natural gas field. There was no planning process that sought to minimise impact on Aboriginal heritage, let alone a comprehensive heritage assessment. Instead, Woodside selected two alternative preferred locations for the onshore gas treatment plant and associated facilities—Searipple Passage and the Withnell Bay/ King Bay area. The Western Australian Museum’s Department of Aboriginal Sites (DAS) was then involved in survey work to choose between them. As a result of a preliminary reconnaissance, the DAS team recommended the Withnell Bay/King Bay area rather than Searipple Passage. Density of Aboriginal heritage around Searipple Passage was already known to be extremely high and a northern development would have meant an access corridor, with attendant impact on heritage values along the entire length of the Burrup. Aboriginal people were not consulted. Woodside subsequently contracted the WA Museum to undertake salvage archaeological work in the development area. The DAS conducted a series of surveys of proposed development areas as part of the environmental impact assessment. In its evaluation the Environmental Protection Authority recommended that Woodside employ an archaeologist during the construction phase. At the same time, DAS stressed the need for comprehensive survey of the Archipelago. A consultancy agreement was then negotiated between Woodside and the Museum to survey, record and salvage rock art and other archaeological material affected by the development. 

The Dampier Archaeological Project began in April 1980 with a three person project team. However, the project was complicated by amendments to the developer’s plans, meaning that new areas had to be surveyed, and the discovery that areas scheduled for salvage turned out to be extraordinarily rich in cultural remains. A second field team started work in October 1980. A third team remained in the field until August 1981 at Woodside’s request to conduct further survey salvage operations, while the original team returned to archive the salvaged material and prepare reports. In all 14 resident team members were involved over 16 months and surveyed some 15% of the Burrup.

The Dampier Archaeological Project recorded 720 registered sites of which only 315 were preserved in situ. Although the original intention was to produce a full analytical report of the project, this never eventuated. In 1984, a preliminary report and map folio described the results at a general and descriptive level. Finally, in 1987, Pat Vinnicombe drew together the available analyses into a descriptive report. Most of the finds and records were simply archived and very little was ever analysed.
The sheer quantity and richness of sites should have led to a reconsideration of the overall plan for industrial development as the Western Australian Museum survey had earlier for Depuch Island. The Dampier Archaeological Project was not a research project and thus the strategy for collecting data was of necessity biased. It was limited in scope because it was aimed specifically at recording and salvage of areas to be impacted by development. Nevertheless, the scale and quality of data recording, the size of the area examined and the intensity of the survey meant that the results should have served as a baseline for future archaeological work in the Dampier Archipelago and specifically should have guided the development of a comprehensive heritage management plan for the Burrup.

A second major survey was conducted by the Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) in the early 1990s. The survey was funded by the National Estate Grants Program and aimed to assess the ‘cultural significance of Aboriginal sites’ on the section of the Burrup Peninsula north of King Bay and Hearson Cove and nominate significant sites and areas to the Register of the National Estate.

The CALM survey was designed to provide a representative sample of sites to redress the balance of previous surveys which either did not define sampling strategy or, like the DAP, were constrained by the requirements of developers.
The CALM survey recorded 498 ‘sites’ in 87.83km of transect and a total area of 8.78km2 (about 8% of the land area of the Burrup). The results differ to some degree from the DAP survey. This is not surprising because the design of the survey strategy meant that the areas surveyed were more representative of the region (that is, not constrained by development requirements) and the results provide a more balanced picture of the region as a whole. Unfortunately the records of these sites are not currently available through the Site Register maintained by Department of Indigenous Affairs.

Since the Dampier Archaeological Project and CALM surveys, development has continued, but management of cultural heritage has received little attention in land use planning. A large number of archaeological and ethnographic surveys have been undertaken for a range of industrial projects, many of them in areas already surveyed by the Dampier Archaeological Project for Woodside’s original LNG development. The two largest of these were commissioned by the Department of Resource Development and LandCorp, in 1996, in the King Bay-Hearson Cove area and the proposed Maitland Heavy Industry Estate. Only limited information on these two surveys is available through the DIA register. There were also a number of mapping problems with the King Bay-Hearson Cove survey. The Maitland Survey included the first significant investigation on West Intercourse Island, which was to carry port facilities. Large mound middens had already been reported on West Intercourse Island but not investigated.

As far back as 1980, DAS raised concerns about the impact on petroglyphs of wind borne industrial products. At that time, the physical destruction of rock art through industrial development and incidental impacts through increased visitor access were the primary concerns. However, increasing levels of air pollution have led to concerns about the possible impact of industrial emissions on rock art. In 2002, the Western Australian government established the Burrup Rock Art Monitoring Management Committee to oversee studies designed to investigate the possible impacts of emissions on rock art. By its nature, this is a long-term project and preliminary results are inconclusive. Of course, it cannot document deterioration that had already occurred prior to 2002.