Looking After Ballardong Country: Mapping and Managing Cultural Heritage Sites

Did you know UWA campus is built on at least three archaeological sites?

Ballardong Country which includes the Perth/Boorloo Hills and extends into the wheatbelt has a rich and diverse cultural heritage that begins at least 40,000 years ago (see https://www.ourwaparks.org.au/project/walyunga-dreaming-2/) and continues today. But this heritage is under threat by urban expansion, deforestation, mining, illegal four wheel drive and dirt bike (https://www.walkgps.com.au/access-issues/trail-bikes/) and dumping activities, climate change and a host of other factors.

To manage these impact we need to find, map and record cultural heritage sites that consist of, for example stone tools, culturally modified trees (https://www.australianarchaeologicalassociation.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Bulloch-Rachel.pdf), stone arrangements, gnamma holes (https://museum.wa.gov.au/explore/wa-goldfields/water-arid-land/gnamma-holes), karda mia (lizard traps - https://www.uwa.edu.au/-/media/Faculties/Science/Docs/06-Hopper-Karda-mia-and-wilgie-gnamma-17-2-2016.pdf), European graves and cairns, and buildings, and so on.

Working with Ballardong Aboriginal Corporation and its Rangers, and with and Sven Ouzman from UWA Archaeology, this project will empower Indigenous Rangers to quickly record cultural sites while they are working on Country. Ideally this would take the form of an application that can record the GPS co-ordinates of a site (and/or allow input of co-ordinates), allow for a few (2-6 ) photographs to be taken, and a series of 6-8 icon-based drop downs to record information about the site and threats to it. This information should then be able to export to a central database. Ideally, a dual naming system (Perth/Boorloo for example) to recognise Indigenous sovereignty would be good; as would ensuring the data is secure and site locations can be masked.

Client

IP Exploitation Model

Department of Computer Science & Software Engineering The University of Western Australia Last modified: 12 July 2024 Modified By: Michael Wise