Cultural Heritage
Mallee Regional Catchment Strategy Goal
To protect cultural heritage and significant landscape sites and to manage the risks to all sites.
Natural Assets
The Victorian Mallee includes some very important cultural heritage sites, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. It is important to preserve these significant sites. The Mallee communities need to understand them better if we are to meet this challenge.
More than 3,800 Aboriginal archaeological sites in the Mallee are recorded on the Aboriginal Affairs Victoria site register, but the non-Aboriginal community is still learning to understand where these are most likely to occur. The location of such sites is strongly influenced by flooding regime and water availability. The boundary between non-alluvial areas and alluvial areas is particularly important.
Aboriginal cultural heritage sites and places are protected under the Archaeological and Aboriginal Relics Protection Act 1972 and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984.
Approximately 52 sites in the Mallee are recorded on the Register of the National Estate. Several more sites are recorded on the Victorian Heritage Register. This strategy concentrates on cultural and heritage sites in the landscape that are potentially vulnerable to threats such as pest plants and animals, altered flooding regimes, land and water salinisation, water quality pollution, wind erosion, changing land use, recreational pressures and altered fire regimes.
The Mallee CMA has commenced a process of engagement and consultation with Indigenous communities and stakeholders in the Mallee. A major concern for these groups is the proper protection of sites with cultural heritage significance.
Indigenous cultural heritage training
Program Objectives
Core projects comprising the Cultural Heritage Program will contribute towards:
- a continuous process of identification of cultural sites, especially in priority areas
- all sites at high risk protected from threatening processes, and reinstatement activities undertaken for damaged sites.
The Living Murray Indigenous Facilitator - Mildura
Ken Stewart works with Indigenous stakeholders across northern Victoria to ensure Aboriginal knowledge, cultural values and perspectives are incorporated into The Living Murray Program.
To download a fact sheet on The Living Murray Indigenous Facilitator click here.
Further Information
For further information, click on any of the links below.