1.3.4.1 Description

The total of 106 sociocultural assets in the asset list are sourced from the Australian Heritage Database (Department of the Environment, 2015; Bioregional Assessment Programme Dataset 1), comprising 96 assets from the Register of the National Estate, nine assets from the National Heritage List and one asset from the World Heritage List. A total of 82 are considered to be water dependent and are included in the water-dependent asset register. Of the water-dependent assets, 29 assets are assessed as dependent or possibly dependent on surface water, 4 assets are assessed as dependent or possibly dependent on groundwater, and 49 assets are assessed as dependent or possibly dependent on both surface water and groundwater. No additional sociocultural assets were nominated at the Galilee asset workshops in Longreach and Richmond in September 2014, and in Brisbane in October 2014.

Table 13 shows the breakdown of sociocultural assets by dataset, subgroup and class, and the geographic locations of the assets are shown in Figure 25. All assets are in the ‘Cultural’ subgroup; no assets are in the ‘Social’ or ‘Recreational’ subgroup. Thirty-three of the assets from the Register of the National Estate are classed as Indigenous sites and 16 of them are water dependent. In the west and south of the Galilee PAE, several large assets intersect with only a small part of the PAE and extend far beyond the boundaries of the PAE. During subsequent stages of the Bioregional Assessment Technical Programme, impact will only be assessed for those parts of such assets that lie within the PAE.

Table 13 Summary of sociocultural assets in the preliminary assessment extent (PAE) of the Galilee subregion

Data: Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 1)

Figure 25 Location of sociocultural assets in the Galilee subregion

Data: Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 1)

The assets from the National Heritage List include many areas that have natural values and are partly or entirely protected under national and/or state conservation legislation. Such sociocultural assets are also nominated as ecological assets (e.g. the Birdsville and Strzelecki Tracks Areas, the Cooper Creek subcatchment, Edgbaston Springs, Elizabeth Springs, the Great Barrier Reef, Lake Eyre National Park and Elliot Price Conservation Park, and the Simpson Desert). The Great Barrier Reef National Park is the single asset nominated from the World Heritage List. All of these two types of asset are dependent on surface water.

Many of the assets sourced from the Register of the National Estate and classed as heritage sites are also natural areas which have federal or state-level conservation designations. They are also nominated as assets from other databases. Examples include:

All examples of this type of asset also depend on surface water, at least in part, and many also depend on groundwater, most notably where Great Artesian Basin springs are present and are the defining heritage feature.

Other assets sourced from the Register of the National Estate and classed as heritage sites are historical places, including the Burke and Wills National Heritage Place, the Burke Memorial, the Wills Monument and Blazed Tree, the Dig Tree Reserve, the Alexandra Bridge, the Angellala Creek Rail Bridge, the Old Bowen Downs Road, and the Politic Sheds Historic Indicative Place. Many of these assets are also assessed as water dependent because they are located in floodplains.

The asset list includes 33 Indigenous sites sourced from the Register of the National Estate list within the Australian Heritage Database (Department of the Environment, 2015). Sixteen of these sites are likely or possibly dependent on surface water, and ten sites may also be dependent on groundwater, including: