Hindmarsh Island, and a Dispute the Atlas Does Not Settle

In the 1990s a proposal to bridge the channel between Goolwa and Hindmarsh Island in Ngarrindjeri country produced the longest and most damaging public argument Australia has had about restricted religious knowledge. Ngarrindjeri women stated that the area held knowledge belonging to women, which they could not disclose in general terms and which the bridge would harm. A South Australian royal commission in 1995 concluded that the restricted women's knowledge had been fabricated.

In 2001 the Federal Court, hearing a different case on much fuller evidence, took the other view: Justice von Doussa stated that he was not satisfied that the restricted women's knowledge had been fabricated. Both findings stand on the record, and the two camps that formed around them have not merged. The atlas takes no side, and it is worth being explicit about why. Deciding the question would mean examining material Ngarrindjeri women say is theirs to withhold, which is the thing the dispute was about in the first place. What the atlas records instead is the shape of the problem: that a legal process which requires disclosure in order to test a claim of restriction cannot test such a claim without breaking it, that this was recognised at the time by people on several sides, and that Australian practice has since moved slowly toward mechanisms for receiving restricted evidence in closed session. The bridge was built and opened in 2001.