The Environmental Defenders’ Office will have to reassess the way it builds cases invoking Indigenous heritage to oppose resource development after Federal Court judge Natalie Charlesworth’s bracing rejection of a case brought on behalf of Tiwi Islanders against Santos’ Barossa gas project.

The Tiwi Islanders’ case was based on the risk that a pipeline connecting the Barossa project in waters north of Darwin to another Santos pipeline would disturb and anger two creatures of their Dreaming stories – Ampiji, the rainbow serpent and Caretaker of the Sea, and the Crocodile Man – leading to calamity and harm to the people.