The first two weeks of the long-awaited court showdown between the billionaire descendants of Australian mining pioneers would have been tough to watch for the country’s richest person, Gina Rinehart.

Troves of documents traversing decades of history were exhumed by Mrs Rinehart’s opponents, providing the court, and the media, new access to deeply private conversations between her children in a bitter family dispute, as well as letters from her late father and Pilbara icon, Lang Hancock.