Deep into the heart of Melbourne’s CBD, I roamed. I had been led on a fool’s errand, and now found myself blindly fumbling through peak-hour foot traffic, searching for a non-existent parcel collection point. I heard a familiar voice call out to me. Looking around, I couldn’t find its source among the blank, vaguely discontent faces of the rat race. “Pete!” the voice cried again. That’s when I realised it was coming from inside the construction site. I poked my face through a gap in the fence and found myself face-to-face with an old friend: Ian Ostericher.
I first met Ian on his wedding night. After tying the knot, he and his new bride Bianca had decided on a whim to visit Lulie Tavern, the dive-bar in Abbotsford where I work. After I insisted on toasting their new union with the Tavern’s finest tequila – Clase Azul Reposado – the three of us became fast friends.
Ian is an archaeologist. For many, the mention of archaeology conjures images of exotic adventure in Greece or Egypt, but this site was a salvage excavation of Aboriginal artefacts, Ian said, explaining that Melbourne’s CBD stands on land rich with Indigenous history, the archaeological extent of which is unknown.
My curiosity piqued, I lured Ian to the Tavern to tell me more that evening with the promise of one of my famous margaritas and hurried home to do some research before my shift. Before I knew it, we’d set up an interview to be conducted over still more margaritas.
After some research, I discovered the junction of three remarkably different realms: commerce, science and spirituality: the world of Cultural Heritage Management. This is legislation created by the Aboriginal Heritage Act in 2006 that established corporations composed of traditional land owners called Registered Aboriginal Parties (RAPs). Their primary role, as laid out by the Act, is to function as the “primary guardians, keepers and knowledge holders of Aboriginal cultural heritage” of the land they represent.
When a development is proposed within a RAP’s boundaries, the developers must first consult with the Elders of the RAP to determine if the land is an area of cultural sensitivity. If so, that developer must hire an archaeologist certified in heritage management, in this case Ian, to create a Cultural Heritage Management Plan assessing the extent of Aboriginal heritage in an area, as well as plans for its preservation and maintenance should the development proceed.
After being appointed Cultural Heritage Manager for a site, Ian first conducts a ‘desktop assessment’ to gather the stories, history, and background data of the area through his own research and consultation with the RAP.
“What does that involve?” I asked Ian as a Tommy’s margarita was set down before him.
“I’ll ask if there are any stories about this part of the world that have any bearing on what we might find, or on how we should be dealing with it, sensitivity-wise,” he replied.
Do we know if there was women’s business, or men’s business or sorry business here? An example would be, now we actually know that this is an area that has a lot of women’s business, then we only have women run the project. So men don’t touch any of the data, men don’t touch anything, and then reports are redacted according to who can view it. You’re saying like, hey, look, we are on your side. We really care,” Ian said
Next, his team conduct standard and complex assessments of the land itself under the supervision of the RAP. The first is a survey, looking for unburied artefacts and surface damage which could affect the potential archaeology below. The second is a subsurface excavation of test squares to determine the concentration of artefacts on the site. In the event of high artefact concentration, a salvage excavation is carried out to unearth and preserve the objects.
“It’s important to remember that these places aren’t just archaeological sites. The information that they contain is, in a lot of ways, sacred to Aboriginal people,” Ian explains. “It’s the interaction between the land and the object. When we do repatriations and reburials, we do a smoking ceremony and then rebury the objects on the same type of landform they were excavated from in a bottomless box, so it’s still in contact with the earth. We also bury it with the ontological report. Almost like a little time capsule. So you’re paying homage to both lineages of knowledge.”
Every link in the chain of Cultural Heritage Management ascribes value differently. For the Aboriginal people, it is a spiritual connection to Country. For the archaeologist, it is discovery and science. For the developer, it is business – the completion of a project to their client on time and on budget. Ian’s job, translating between these different spheres, seemed like alchemy to me.
“On any particular job, I have three clients,” Ian said. “As a business, I’ve got a financial obligation to the developer. Then there’s the ethical client – the science of collaborative practice. Making sure the claims that we’re making about the past are as evidenced as well we possibly can make them where we don’t over-interpret or under-interpret evidence. And then, third, there’s the moral client in the traditional owners of the land. My work is sometimes at odds with the idea of self determination and the control of their own land. It’s difficult. ”
To get a better idea of the different forces at work in this challenging exercise, I spoke to another of my regulars at Lulie Tavern. Tom Muratore has an extensive background in commercial and multi-residential property development in Melbourne. I’d noticed that the flow of money during the heritage management process came exclusively through the developer, who pays the archaeologists, the supervising members of the Registered Aboriginal Party, and consultation fees for every meeting with the party Elders. The Heritage Act seemed to me to support privatisation and a resulting lack of transparency that I hoped Tom could explain to me.
I met with him in his company’s showroom to discuss the Cultural Heritage Management process from his point of view. Warm and obliging, Tom put a pot of filter coffee on for us while fielding endless phone calls from Chinese supply companies and obscenely wealthy clients who wanted their antique chair legs dipped in brass.
“I want to make one thing clear,” Tom cut in curtly as I waxed lyrical to him about my impressions. “It’s got nothing to do with the developer. Everyone now just anticipates [Cultural Heritage Management] happening and adds a fee on to it. And as it gets worse, the prices have been escalating. The price of real estate in Australia is caused by this kind of bureaucracy. Our building cost in Victoria is higher than anywhere else in Australia.”
“I just think we’re just generating work. How does money solve a heritage problem? Where does that money go? Is that money going directly to Aboriginal communities? Or is it going into another bureaucracy?”
It’s clear that Tom comes from a very different place to Ian. His concerns are based on the completion of the job he has been contracted to do. His frustration with the bureaucratic process is also echoed by other developers in Victoria.
In submissions to the Victorian Government’s Inquiry into Establishment and Effectiveness of Registered Aboriginal Parties, Westwind Energy wrote that over $750,000 was “required to be spent without any certainty that a project would be approved on cultural heritage grounds, let alone other planning grounds,” while VicRoads wrote that many RAPs “are now charging rates substantially higher than those recommended in the Guidelines in what has become a highly inflationary unregulated charging environment.”
There were also several submissions to the Inquiry, many heavily redacted, from traditional land owners. Many had seen their application for RAP status denied or ignored by the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council, resulting in loss of income and community credibility. When a traditional land owner is excluded from RAP status, they cannot hold events that generate money for their communities, like traditional smoking ceremonies and speeches of welcome.
In his statement to the Inquiry, Neil Clark of the heritage advisory firm Clarkeology said the process of RAP appointment “is a competitive application process whereby two groups come in and they are both really being asked to say, ‘My claim for historical connection is stronger than your claim for historical connection’. Usually there is only one group selected, so there are winners and losers. It just seems to me that is an inherently unfair process. I do not dispute that the groups who have got RAP status deserve RAP status, but what about everybody else?”
To better understand the spiritual connection between Aboriginal people and Country, I reached out to Emily Poelina-Hunter, whose status as Reconciliation Lead for the City of Melbourne, lecturer of Aboriginal Studies at La Trobe University, doctor of archaeology and Aboriginal woman put her in a position to provide unique insight. I wanted to know if it was possible for a Cultural Heritage Management Report to sufficiently communicate the importance of Country in Aboriginal culture.
“I definitely think there is a way that the spiritual importance of Country can be written about in English for CHMPs,” Emily said, “but I think it would be best done by an Indigenous writer who is comfortable with academic scientific English – because this is a bit different to conversational everyday English. Translating anything from an Aboriginal language into English is hard enough to find equivalent words with similar meaning. And then anthropologists and archaeologists use their own academic terminology and categorise things in ways that kind of don’t always capture the essence of Aboriginal words.
“And when it comes to something seemingly intangible – like spiritual connection to Country – it is super hard to put something that complex into words.
“I’ve been watching Selling Houses Australia on Foxtel, and the respect for 1920s art deco bathrooms, or a 100 year old house built during the gold rush in Bendigo blows my mind. Or people having to sell a house that has been in their family for 80 years is really sad. Give me a break! If they get that, why can’t they just times it by 500 and grasp 1000s of generations of families being connected to and caring for Country?”
Emily’s comparison to Selling Houses Australia was apt. Ascribing value to Aboriginal connection to Country seemed like an exercise in metaphysics, particularly through the bureaucratic maze of the Heritage Act. But what’s the alternative, and should we be appraising the intangible at all?
Pete Whelan
Pete Whelan 