|
 SunWater
has constructed a 35 kilometre water pipeline near Monto,
Burnett region, southeast Queensland. The pipeline will
carry water from an artesian bore to a proposed mineral
extraction mine in Goondicum Crater, an extinct volcanic
feature in the Burnett Range.
SunWater
encouraged a best practice involvement in the project,
providing technical advice through Turnstone Archaeology for
the relevant Aboriginal groups whose overlapping claims
cover the project area.
These groups include the Gayndah and Eidsvold Wakka Wakka
people and representatives of the Gooreng Gooreng and Gurang
people in the Port Curtis Coral Coast claim. The Aboriginal
participants asked for Turnstone Archaeology to undertake
the project, citing their long involvement with Michael
Strong.
 Of
particular value is the voluntary participation of local
landowners, who have come forward with information about
Aboriginal heritage sites on their properties. This has
resulted in the identification of major artefact scatters,
scarred trees, camping places, burial sites and axe grinding
grooves that would otherwise not have been identified.
While some landowners are often
reluctant to inform Aboriginal communities about cultural
heritage sites on their land, a new spirit of reconciliation
and cooperation has emerged in the Goondicum Mine project,
one that is immensely rewarding in establishing a bridge
between landowners and Aboriginal people .
GOONDICUM MINE MITIGATION PROGRAM
Representatives of Wakka Wakka (northern)
People and Gooreng Gooreng members of the Port Curtis Coral
Coast claim have concluded a major mitigation program for
the Goondicum Mine Project. More than 150 Aboriginal people
were involved in the recording, mapping, excavation,
collection and analysis of several significant sites in
association with Turnstone Archaeology.
Turnstone Archaeology
excavated a number of residual hearth sites where Aboriginal
people cooked food. Carbon dating in New Zealand of
charcoal from one of these hearths (SAA 12, H2) has produced
a date of between 850-750 years old, roughly the time of the
Crusades, the signing of Magna Carta and the Mongol
invasions.
The excavations have proved that these
ephemeral sites are cultural. Because of the difficulty in
positively identifying hearths in the field, it was valuable
to find numerous artefacts, including chert microliths,
located in the baked clay around the cooking area.
Excavation of one hearth established that a
shallow hole was dug in the ground, filled with hot coals
and the animal to be cooked laid in the coals, then covered
with clay and earth and a fire built over the top. This is
consistent with historical accounts provided by early
explorers, such as Roth and Lumholtz, in northern
Queensland. The baked clay is brick hard and survives
ploughing and land clearing often as the only indication of
the former presence of a campsite.
Over 1000 artefacts have been collected under
scientific conditions. These have been subject to a
detailed analysis by Dr Mark Moore, University of New
England, NSW.
 The
study identified a range of stone tools, including adzes,
burren adzes, retouched flakes, eloueras, pecked and flaked
edge-ground axes, a new form of right-angle blade core,
single and multi platform cores, bipolar cores and tablet
cores. Two examples of small grooved grindstones were
located. Primary materials being utilised were fine-grained
silcrete, mudstone and chert.
Aboriginal people have a long history in the
Monto area, at least 20,000 years at Cania Gorge about 20 km
from the study area. The study has shown that Aboriginal
people in the Monto area were moving along the Splinter
Creek/Herring Gully catchment via the Yarrol Road corridor
and up over a steep ridge separating the western creeks
catchment from the Burnett River catchment. They accessed
the big scrubs for possums, brush turkey eggs, pigeons, figs
and plums. The wealth of sites located during the study
indicate various land uses, including camp sites where heat
treated silcrete (possibly not intentional) predominates in
the archaeological record, to highly mobile scatters
dominated by retouched artefacts, such as adzes.
The artefact collection will be kept at Monto
and the traditional owners are working with Monto Council to
arrange a permanent home for this significant archaeological
collection.
The project has allowed a large number of
Aboriginal people to have a hands-on experience of
archaeological best practice. The community is grateful to
SunWater and Monto Minerals for making this possible.
Several landowners have come forward since a presentation to
Monto Council by Turnstone and Aboriginal coordinators with
information about cultural sites on their properties.
 |
