the 1988 Bicentenary. The book, Generations: Grandmothers, Mothers and Daughters (with photos by Ponch Hawkes) traces ways in which significant objects in the lives of Australian women have been passed from generation to generation and explores how stories of the objects forge links with female kin. Bell used an ethnographic approach to explore the commonalities of Australian women's cultures across age, time, race and region. Shortly after it was published, the book reached number one on the Age best seller list for works of non-fiction. Throughout the latter part of the 1970s, and through most of the 1980s, Bell was involved in issues about Aboriginal land rights and law reform. With lawyer, Pam Ditton, she authored Law: the old and the new. Aboriginal Women in Central Australia Speak Out (Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service, 1980/1984) which addressed issues of law reform in Central Australia, in the wake of the passage of the Northern Territory Land Rights Act (1976). Bell worked on some 10 land claims for the Central Land Council, the Northern Land Council and the then Aboriginal Land Commissioner, Mr Justice Toohey. In the late 1990s, Bell was drawn into Hindmarsh Island bridge controversy. In 1994, a group of Ngarrindjeri women, traditional owners of the Lower River Murray, Lakes Alexandrina and Albert and the Coorong (South Australia) had objected that a proposal to build a bridge from Goolwa to Kumarangk (Hindmarsh Island) near the Murray Mouth would desecrate sites sacred to them as women. The gender restricted knowledge that underwrote their claim became known as 'secret women's business' and was contested in the media, courts and academy. In 1996, a South Australian Royal Commission found that the women had deliberately fabricated their beliefs to thwart the development. However, with one exception, the women who claimed knowledge of the sacred tradition did not give evidence at the Royal Commission because they considered it to be a violation of their religious freedoms. In 1997, in the Federal Court of Australia, the developers sought compensation for the losses incurred by the delays in the building of the bridge. Mr. Justice von Doussa, heard from all parties to the dispute and, although the court had been informed that the case would not be a rerun of the Royal Commission, the matter of restricted women's knowledge recurred such that 'late in the trial the applicants amended their pleadings to specifically allege that the