Elder Wilfred Hicks captured by five times Archibald Prize finalist Julie Dowling. The 2013 Archibald submission came second.

Western Australia’s Burrup Peninsula is home to the world’s largest and oldest collection of rock art and petroglyphs, more than one million of them – tens of thousands of years of recorded Aboriginal culture. The Save the Burrup campaigners led by local Elder Wilfred Hicks have campaigned furiously for nearly a decade to have the coastline sites World Heritage listed.

They had been hoping that the Australian Greens with the oft balance of power in the Senate could push through the heritage status. But with an election around the corner it looks like hopes held during the last couple of years could be terminally dashed. But the campaigners will not give up – their Stand up for the Burrup campaign has been not just national, but global.

At the eleventh hour, the Australian Greens have once again called for the Burrup Peninsula’s Aboriginal rock art to be given world heritage status.

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said that successive Governments had treated this “extraordinary precinct” of Aboriginal history with “profound contempt”.

He said that the fight for world heritage history “will continue for as long as it takes.”

He said that the whole of the Dampier Archipelago of which the Burrup Peninsula is part, should be environmentally and culturally valued by the Federal Government and hence head it to the protections of world heritage listing.

Yesterday, custodian Mr Hicks, who speaks for the local Wong-Goo-tt-oo peoples, met with Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke. “I feel that we are progressing forward and we still hope to see in the next twelve months where we will have got to.”

Wilfred Hicks and his grandson Jayden Dhu

“The significance of the rock art is because it has been handed down to us from our families.”

“The spirit in the rocks stays there,” said Mr Hicks.

The Burrup Peninsula is located in the Pilbara, in WA’s north. The rock art precinct, the largest in the world, contains Aboriginal carvings and paintings of human figures, faces, animals, way of life and are tens of thousands of years old, some of it dated forty at thousand years old.

Scientists cannot believe the Australian Government’s hesitancy to protect the petroglyphs, but extractive resources miners and developers most certainly do, as the Pilbara is the heart of the mining boom and it may be that even along the Pilbara coastline in addition to the ores and minerals inland that shale gas may abound. Trillions of cubic metres of shale gas have been identified to the Pilbara’s north at the Canning Basin.

But for scientists – anthropologists – the rock art provides an in-depth insight into human habitation and its advanced social mores thousands of years old on this continent, and further evidence of the oldest ongoing culture on the planet.

There is already a six year study of thousands of the rock art by the University of Western Australia financed by Rio Tinto – and they are being catalogued. This is a positive step by Rio Tinto, who alongside other mining companies, had been criticised for destructive impacts on the petroglyphs and the loss of historical artefacts.

There are images of thylacines (Tasmanian tigers) which became extinct on the Australian mainland about 3,500 years ago.

UWA’s Professor Bill Louden said the Rio Tinto Chair in Rock Art Studies has significantly advanced the capacity for global knowledge of the Pilbara rock art.

The Dampier Archipelago is on the National Heritage List and is being considered for nomination to the World Heritage List. This is the objective of custodians Wilfred Hicks and senior Law Man, Tim Douglas, and of the Save the Burrup campaigners.

UWA’s Rock Art Studies Chair, Professor Jo McDonald said the area contains tens of thousands of engravings with richly detailed images of water birds, crabs, crayfish, kangaroos, turtles and fish and a prolific number of schematised human figures demonstrating a complex record which includes details of material culture and regional social connections through the Pilbara. But there are also stone features including fish traps, complex circular arrangements, and standing stones ranging from single monoliths through to extensive alignments of three or four hundred stones.

The Burrup Peninsulas peoples had been just about wiped out with one massacre after another – beginning 145 years ago. Up to 150 Aboriginal peoples are believed to have been slaughtered in the one day soon after the arrival of colonialists, in what is now known as the Flying Foam Massacre. Only six Yaburara survived the slaughter to tell the story.

Earlier this year, for the first time in 145 years they were formally remembered – to the day they were slaughtered, on February 17. They had been killed by a posse that included police.

Mr Hicks said that women and children “were murdered by gunshot”.

He described the 1868 slaughter as genocide. The posse had culminated after violent altercations between the local Aboriginal peoples and the colonialists which included a police officer being speared for raping a Yaburara woman. Because of the number of reprisals there are fewer descendants of the Yaburara peoples than there are of other Aboriginal peoples in the Pilbara.

The Burrup rock art are important to the remaining descendants, they are a connection to historical and contemporary identity. Mr Hicks has been campaigning alongside lawyer Mark Lawrence, the coordinator of the Save the Burrup for the world heritage listing.

Mr Hicks said what is important is not to forget those who were slaughtered and all the others oppressed and this can be done by protecting the rock art. The art is not only along the mainland coastline but also on  42 islets.

“There is one generation after another of history among the art and engravings,” said Mr Hicks.

“This history is the Aboriginal Bible.”

Mr Lawrence said that since 1965 “an estimated 25 per cent of the Burrup rock art has been destroyed for industrial development.”

In May 2012, the Australian Heritage Council’s Final Report on the Dampier Archipelago confirmed that the rock art precinct meets UNESCO’s Outstanding Universal Values criteria for world heritage listing.