Preserving Aboriginal Cultural Heritage

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Length

02:03

Summary

The video shows a property in Kialla, near Shepparton, situated within Yorta Yorta Country alongside the Goulburn River. Due to its proximity to the river, it falls under Aboriginal land overlay regulations. During a demolition project, a Cultural Heritage Supervisor discovered potentially significant sites, including a Birthing Tree and a Ring Tree, prompting extra measures to protect them. The property owners are enthusiastic about learning more about the heritage. An archaeologist may be engaged to assess the sites and register them for preservation. Safety precautions include cordoning off the area and restricting machinery access. The video highlights the importance of considering cultural heritage in development projects to prevent the loss of ancient sites, contrasting with past instances where such sites were neglected, resulting in irreparable damage.

Transcript

Melanie Micalizzi – Cultural Heritage Lead A2B Personnel: Today we are on Yorta Yorta Country in Kialla, just outside of Shepparton, and alongside the Goulburn River. So the Goulburn River is a natural waterway. Anything within 200m of a natural waterway like that actually falls into Aboriginal land overlay, so the property that we’re visiting today that’s having demolition done actually falls within that 200m radius. Our Cultural Heritage Supervisor based over here discovered potentially a Birthing Tree and a Ring Tree to the rear of the property so that’s been quite significant for this property. The property owners are very excited about it too and they’re very keen to learn and know more which is a really nice learning piece, I think, to come from the project as well. Yeah just means some extra measures put in place for the demolition process. Yorta Yorta will likely engage an archaeologist to have a look at the sites that they found and go through a registration process where that will then be entered into the archives and they also give us a Safe Working Recommendation, which was just to cordon off the back end of the property and for no machinery or trucks to enter by there so all the machinery and workforce will come through the front gate and there’s a cyclone fence up protecting the area with the heritage significance. There’s been lots of projects, you know, years and years ago, completely not related to this, in the past, where there has been no thought put into the cultural heritage significance of the land and it has resulted in some really catastrophic disruption of some cultural heritage sites. These days, cultural heritage is, you know, very well respected and celebrated. Having it as part of this process has allowed us to protect and preserve whereas, had they not put these measures in place, we may have, you know, lost some thousands, tens of thousands of year-old heritage that would no longer be there for people to see and celebrate.

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Updated 22 March 2024

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