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Cultural Significance

While all of Country is significant to Nyamal, there are many special or significant places across Nyamal Country that we need to visit, maintain and protect.

These include:

  • sites with scatters of artefacts such as grinding tools, animal bones ochre, quarries
  • carvings and paintings places on songlines, medicine
  • places, burial places, ceremonial sites, mens/womens sites, ceremonial/lore grounds, birthing places, healing places
  • historical sites including strike camps, yandying places and old camps on stations and mine sites.

These places are of highest importance to Nyamal people because of the link to their ancestors, history and culture and are the most focal point of ongoing connection as well as providing important cultural resources for which their place was valued.

Many sites are well known and used by many Nyamal People. Some sites are particularly important to particular family groups who hold custodial responsibilities.

“You feel proud, just knowing that it belonged to your people before you and it brings so much peace to yourself and within.”
– Eileen Rule, 2024
“Inside Nyamal Country there are different special areas that different family groups speak for. These are usually around the yinta of those people”
– Teddy Allen 2005 (CR)
There are many places on Nyamal Country recorded on the Aboriginal Heritage Site Register which have some protections under the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972. There is active monitoring of cultural heritage places through mining clearance processes, however the information from heritage surveys is not going into any database or resource to assist Nyamal to monitor those sites.

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