Caleb Pitt-Cook is drifting just above the ocean floor, running his fingers through the soft sand.
The 24-year-old Ngarluma man is searching for the stone tools his ancestors used thousands of years ago.
“If you told me I’d be doing this work two years ago, I would have laughed in your face,” he says.
“It’s one of the coolest parts of our job. I’d say it’s my favourite part right now.”
Ngarluma man Caleb Pitt-Cook is a ranger with the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation. (Supplied: John McCarthy)
Mr Pitt-Cook is contributing to research that has already made history.
“There’s only ever been two submerged Aboriginal archaeological sites mapped in Australia,” Flinders University maritime archaeologist John McCarthy says.
“Those were found by our team here.”
Hunt for submerged historyÂ
When humans first populated the Australian continent about 65,000 years ago, the sea level was much lower.
“There’s a huge area of archaeological landscape that’s been lost to sea level change,” Dr McCarthy says.
“[Back then] you could have walked all the way to Indonesia.”
Sea level modelling shows millennia of change along the Pilbara coast. (Supplied: John McCarthy)
Since 2019, Dr McCarthy’s team has been trying to find artefacts from that time, submerged off the coast of the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia.
The region’s traditional custodians call the peninsula Murujuga.
“The initial discoveries made in Murujuga were stone tools. They’re very common — the sort of knives and forks of their day,” Dr McCarthy says.
“They survive very well through sea-level change because they’re made of igneous rock, which is very hard and durable.”
John McCarthy’s project has uncovered two of Australia’s submerged Aboriginal archaeological sites. (ABC News: Charlie Mclean)
Maritime archaeology of this kind is still in its infancy in Australia.
Dr McCarthy says it is almost certain there are significant sites all across the continent’s perimeter, and mapping where they are is the first step to protecting them.
Rangers find purpose
This year’s round of underwater surveys is the first time in Australia that Indigenous rangers have accompanied maritime archaeologists.
It is the culmination of more than a year of training for a handful of Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation rangers.
Rangers like Malik Churnside have joined researchers under water for the first time. (ABC News: Alistair Bates)
“First, you start off with pool dives and it’s a big jump up to actually get out on the water,” Ngarluma ranger Malik Churnside says.
“Once you’re out there in the water and there’s actually animals … sharks swimming around, [it] can be quite a scary sight, at first.”
One of the submerged sites Mr Churnside surveyed was an area that thousands of years ago would have been a freshwater spring.
The spring is referenced in a Ngarluma cultural song his elders still sing today.
“It’s just like evidence and a connection to something they’ve talked about and sung about for such a long time,” he said.
“It’s purpose and meaning; you get a sense of belonging to this whole landscape and the people that were here before.”
Indigenous divers are connecting to submerged sites that appear in songlines and stories. (Supplied: John McCarthy)
Technology popular with elders
Back at camp, Yindjibarndi man and Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation director Vincent Adams pulls on a virtual reality headset.
It transports him from the hot Pilbara afternoon to the silty depths of Murujuga, where he can look out at the seabed alongside the divers.
Virtual reality headsets take the elders to the lost underwater world. (ABC News: Alistair Bates)
The goggles connect to a live feed from a remote operated vehicle (ROV), allowing elders and knowledge holders to identify artefacts in real time.
Mr Adams says the technology is a big hit among the community elders.
“It’s like 20 years ago when the mobile phone came out and they were all frightened of it,” he laughs.
“This headset? They were frightened of it … [then] you couldn’t get them off it.”
Mr Adams says several of the artefacts he has helped classify trace back to ancient hunting, crafts, and ceremonies; practices that still exist in some form today.
Stone tools used for hunting, crafts and cultural ceremonies have already been found. (ABC News: Alistair Bates)
“When they bring this up from under water, we can see that this is history from here, culture from here,” he said.
It is also an opportunity to inform researchers of the local lore and rules behind the tools.
“If it’s men’s stuff [that] comes up, women can’t see this, kids can’t see it. Only men that have been through law,” Mr Adams says.
“We’ve been practising for years on land. This culture now is under water.”
Vincent Adams says the work will inform protections for sea country. (ABC News: Alistair Bates)
High stakes, quiet moments
The ROV will allow the team to rapidly survey larger and harder-to-reach areas.
Mapping these sites is a new frontier for cultural heritage protections and could prove pertinent for waters crisscrossed by bulk carriers and offshore pipelines.
The project’s latest phase has called in the ROV, a remotely operated underwater drone. (Supplied: John McCarthy)
Murujuga intersects with the Carnarvon basin, which is home to Australia’s largest gas reserves.
Geoff Bailey, a world authority on submerged landscapes, says robust information is essential to ensure industry can navigate the uncharted history off the Burrup Peninsula.
“If somebody puts a hole in the seabed … they’re quite likely to expose something that is of relevance and interest to the environmental history of the landscape and the cultural history of that landscape,” Professor Bailey says.
“The key to this is good communication and understanding.”
Three more dives are planned for later this year. (Supplied: John McCarthy)
Earlier this month, the Murujuga Cultural Landscape was granted World Heritage status by the United Nations in recognition of its outstanding universal value.
In UNESCO’s unanimous ruling, member countries lauded the underwater archaeological work as a critical part of the nomination and called for further study.
UNESCO approves World Heritage bid for rock art
Mr Vincent Adams says the research is laying important groundwork as more gas projects look to come online.
“This has popped up a lot of times in conversations with elders, saying what about the pipeline?” he says.
“There’s no law, there’s no rule for any of this.
“We’re paving the way for this to happen.”
Caleb Pitt-Cook says he feels validated by each archeological discovery. (Supplied: John McCarthy)
Beyond the enormity of the task at hand, Mr Pitt-Cook’s time below the waves is one of reflection.
“Our culture is an oral-based tradition so it’s all passed down through generations of speaking, songs and teaching,” he says.
“A lot of people are really sceptical because we don’t have anything written down on paper.
“But to actually go out and explore these places where the stories originate from is really special.
“It’s a whole different world under the water.”
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