There are some issues remaining with the design and content of the IHF; these are addressed in Appendix B. One final issue relates to visitors. The Tangentyere research unit found in its population and mobility study that it was hard to distinguish between residents and visitors. They had a ‘long discussion’ about the issue when designing their survey, including the possibility of defining visitors by ‘how long they had been staying there’ (Foster et al. 2005: 16). In the end, the Tangentyere research unit decided to let the ‘house boss’ for each dwelling tell them who was a resident and who was a visitor. They found that there were a significant number of visitors who had been staying at dwellings for longer than six weeks, or even longer than three months. They commented, after noting this, that ‘it seemed that who is a visitor is related to the right to be at [a] particular camp or dwelling’ (Foster et al. 2005: 16).

This finding bears out emphatically the inadequacy of the 2001 approach of leaving visitors in the town camps to be counted elsewhere, and the correctness of the 2006 Census approach of trying to count visitors. When such long-term residents are referred to as visitors, however, the question arises as to whether very short-term visitors are also being captured by this terminology. This issue can also be approached by reflecting on another finding of the Tangentyere population and mobility study.

The third survey in the Tangentyere study in April 2005 was carried out during two weeks straddling a major weekend football carnival. The Tangentyere research unit expected that this might lead to higher numbers of visitors in the camps than in their first two surveys; however, with a line of questioning that focused explicitly on who stayed in a dwelling ‘last night’ they still did not seem to be able to capture this short-term visitation. They commented of their third survey: ‘The football visitors were not at the camps after the weekend, and there was not a significantly higher number of visitors. It seemed that most of the football visitors came in for the weekend only and went back to their communities straight away’ (Foster et al. 2005: 19).

With Tangentyere unable to capture this expected short-term visitation in its survey, it is perhaps to be expected that the census might have similar problems. Question 12 on the IHF did not go quite so far as saying that everyone should be listed who stayed at a dwelling last night; rather it opted for the slightly more general terminology of people ‘who are living or staying here now’. It is possible therefore that the census collectors in 2006 missed overnight visitors to town camps in much the same way as the football visitors were missed by the Tangentyere research unit survey in April 2005. This is not a problem for the census as a whole, since such short-term visitors to the town camps are reasonably likely to be counted elsewhere. It simply means that the visitor count at Tangentyere, while capturing longer-term visitors, might still not capture fully very short-term visitors.