The Meeting of the Waters: The Hindmarsh Island
Affair
Margaret Simons (Hodder, 2003)
I
read a lot. Every so often a book appears that consumes
me and makes me want to tell everyone about
it. Such a book is The Meeting of the Waters: The Hindmarsh
Island Affair by Margaret Simons.
No
one who read newspapers, watched television news or listened
to radio news in the
1990s could have missed what
came to
be known as ‘the Hindmarsh Island affair’.
For the most part, it was a very confusing and drawn
out saga.
At the heart of this ‘affair’ at one level
was a conflict about a bridge. On the one hand there
was the
desire of a family business, the Chapmans, to build a
bridge from a place called Goolwa on the mainland of
South Australia
over the mouth of the Murray River to Hindmarsh Island;
on the other hand there were Ngarrindjeri women who opposed
this development because they claimed it would violate
a
site where secret women’s business had been conducted.
The ‘affair’ was then complicated when a
second group of Ngarrindjeri women disputed the veracity
of the
claims of the others.
An
important sub-text in the Hindmarsh Island bridge story
is the value and respect afforded
a people who
relied on
oral tradition to hand on their culture and beliefs,
especially when faced with the full impact of colonisation.
This mirrors
a core issue in the current debate being conducted
among prominent historians.
It
is noteworthy that the politics of the Hindmarsh Island
bridge took place against the backdrop
of the
June 1992
Mabo decision. After two hundred years of being rendered
invisible
in law, Indigenous people were recognised as ‘first
peoples’ of this land. Suddenly, the balance
of power around land and natural resources tipped
dramatically. Economic
and political interests were threatened and the mantra
of ‘the
end of certainty’ made it appear as if our
whole way of life was at risk. The hysteria equaled
the ‘reds
under beds’ hysteria of the 1950s. As in the
1950s, there were people poised to take full political
advantage
of people’s fears. It is not surprising then
that, in this context, the Hindmarsh Island affair
assumed national
significance.
The
strength of Margaret Simons’ account
of the Hindmarsh Island bridge affair is that it
is not an apologia for any
party caught up in this saga. Rather, Simons writes
a very well researched and dispassionate account
of the events dating
from the early 1990s when a plan for a bridge was
first mooted. She does not romanticise or demonise
any party – she
simply tells the story as it happened. The reader
is left to draw her own conclusions about the personalities
involved.
An
amazing number of players are caught up in this drama.
Some play starring roles like
Ian McLachlan,
the Federal
Member for Barker and Minister for Defence in
the newly elected (1996) Howard Government; Doreen
Kartinyeri, senior Ngarrindjeri
woman and proponent of secret women’s business;
Dorothy Wilson, one of the key dissident Ngarrindjeri
women. Others
feature in the background and play important supporting
roles. These included influential media and legal
personalities
such Ian Callinan, Christopher Pearson, Ron Brunton,
Michael Duffy, Chris Kenny and Piers Akerman who
were among the opponents
of the claims about secret women’s business.
Anthropologists also played an important role in
the ‘affair’.
Norman Tindale, Diane
Bell, Phillip Jones and Deane Fergie are some
prominent names and personalities that are drawn
into the
drama. This book
provides some insight into the network of power
and influence among and within what was an emerging
New
Right hegemony
in this country. I found it fascinating that
some of these personalities were at the forefront
of
attack against the
Social Action Office for its marginal electorates
campaign
in the 2001 Federal Election.
The
mouth of the Murray River is the landscape in which this
drama is acted
out. This mighty
river flows into
Lake Alexandrina
where fresh waters mingle with salt at high
tide before flowing into the ocean. Hindmarsh Island
is
situated
in this lake
where these waters meet. The Ngarrindjeri people
are the traditional custodians of this country.
With them,
the
river that flows into this area has endured
the negative impact
of two centuries of colonisation. As part of
the telling of this story, the author shares
a little
of the dreamtime
stories of the Ngarrindjeri. It is not surprising
that the landscape figures prominently in these
stories and that the
contours and flows of this landscape truly
mirror women’s
business.
It
is impossible to do justice to the excellence of this work
in this short review. In short,
it is an
outstanding
piece of research, providing an analysis
of how this society works and how it reacts when
a challenge
is made to the economic,
cultural and political pillars that prop
it up.
I
recommend this book to those who seek to know how our nation
works and how the dominant
forces
combine
to silence
subjugated
voices who dare to utter a dissident voice
amid the deliberate cacophony that instructs
us about
what
we should believe
about our country.
To
conclude, let the author, Margaret Simons, speak for herself:
