The impact of visitors on Ngarrindjeri cultural heritage within the Kurangk is an ongoing issue, forming a range of broader concerns the Ngarrindjeri Nation wants to address with their long-term vision for country. The South Australian government must also balance this with its obligation to allow continued public access due the Kurangk’s National Park status. Stopping vehicle access to areas where people have historically had access is difficult. Author providedĮxplainer: why the rock art of Murujuga deserves World Heritage statusĪs access to these parts of the Kurangk becomes more restricted, more people are encroaching illegally on the dunes where Ngarrindjeri cultural heritage lies. Vehicle track along the ocean in the southern Kurangk. Tragically, some visitors have lost their lives trying to negotiate this thin strip of coastline. Vehicle tracks along the ocean have become reduced thanks to erosion linked to sea level rise. Encroaching seasĬlimate change is also having a dramatic impact on the landscape of the Kurangk. Ngarrindjeri elders I have worked with over the years have described burial grounds within the Coorong turned to dust as a result of illegal vehicles. Given the large area the Kurangk occupies, illegal vehicle use can go undetected despite National Parks rangers regularly monitoring visitor use. While there are signs in the Kurangk directing people to stay within fenced access tracks and designated camping areas, numerous visitors ignore or even vandalise these so they can access dune areas where the vast middens are located. As a result, the number of visitors to remote, dune areas of the Kurangk has steadily increased over the intervening decades, coinciding with increased impacts to Ngarrindjeri cultural heritage, which are physically disturbed by the tyres of the vehicles.įriday essay: how archaeology helped save the Franklin River Since the 1980s these have become much more common. Studies have shown that sand dunes, where middens lie, are vulnerable to visitors to the Kurangk, especially off-road vehicles such as quad bikes and four-wheel drives. His work demonstrated an uninterpreted and continuing connection of the Ngarrindjeri Nation into historic times, which continues today through the ongoing management, use and enjoyment of this landscape.Īrchaeologist Roger Luebbers examining middens on the Kurangk. At the time Luebbers also worked with members of the Ngarrindjeri Nation, recording oral accounts to get a sense of people’s continued connection to the Kurangk since colonisation. ![]() In the early 1980s, archaeologist Roger Luebbers documented the location, size and content of various middens in the Kurangk, demonstrating that these middens form the largest, most extensive evidence of Aboriginal occupation in the region. Middens comprising of discarded cockle shells, which can be found on the sand dunes of the Younghusband Peninsula that separate the Kurangk’s estuary from the Southern Ocean, are testament to this ongoing connection. The region is an important cultural landscape that has sustained the Ngarrindjeri Nation culturally and economically since Creation. Australia's problem with Aboriginal World Heritage
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