The Dingo Took Over My Life. Stuart Tipple
of sand found in the jumpsuit. He found that soil in the campsite area had the same acidity as sand in Azaria’s jumpsuit and was different from the sand at the base of Ayers Rock.
The rumours escalated. When Malcolm Brown, as a reporter on the Sydney Morning Herald, rang Lindy at Mt Isa on 3rd September 1980, Michael had resumed his ministerial duties and was on a four-day conference for SDA ministers at Townsville. She said Aidan had come home crying from school, after receiving cruel jibes from other children. A friend’s phone had been “running hot” with unsympathetic inquirers. “The latest rumour going around is that my husband has been charged with murder, and that the baby was a sacrifice for our religion,” she said. “People say this memorial we want put up to Azaria at Ayers Rock is part of this sacrifice thing.” When she went shopping, and was unrecognised, she heard the gossip. “They’re liking the case with the Jonestown massacre and with the Spear Creek murders at Mt Isa 12 months ago,” she said. “I think three people were killed then. We were not even in Mt Isa. People say Azaria was sickly. They even say she was spastic. She wasn’t.” In October 1980, police conducted an interview with Aidan Chamberlain at Mt Isa. While they were doing that, Constable Barry Graham searched the Chamberlains’ car using a Big Jim torch. He reported: “I examined the interior of the vehicle, including the front and rear sections, seats, console, dashboard, glove compartment and hood. I did not find any suspicious staining in those areas.” He later admitted that he was also looking for a possible weapon and found none, not even scissors. His report would not be disclosed till years later. Neither the Chamberlain’s nor their legal team were told of this search until the Royal Commission years later.
Michael and Lindy Chamberlain gave statements on 1st and 2nd October. On 15th December, represented by an Alice Springs solicitor, Peter Dean, and later Phil Rice QC, from Adelaide, they appeared at the coroner’s inquest before Denis Barritt. Barritt was a genial 54-year-old former Victorian detective, then barrister, who had come to the Northern Territory 2-1/2 years before as a magistrate and coroner. He was from several perspectives the right man for the job. He had taken pains to educate himself in traditional Aboriginal law and culture. Interviewed by Malcolm Brown, he said that on one occasion an Aboriginal youth had stolen a car in Alice Springs and driven out towards an outstation in the desert. When he was a long way out, he had heard a noise in the back seat, had a look and found a little boy had been sleeping there. The youth brought the boy back to Alice Springs. He tried to get away but was caught. Barritt said: “The rules of the bench prevented me from stepping down and hugging that young man! He could have just ditched the boy somewhere. But he did the right thing.” Barritt did not say what penalty he had imposed for illegal use of the car, but it would probably have been a good behaviour bond, possibly with no conviction recorded. Barritt had a similar common-sense view towards the evidence that was now presented to him.
Appearing in the witness box, Lindy Chamberlain was well aware of rumours and suggestions that she had been involved in the baby’s death. She told Ashley Macknay, counsel assisting the coroner, that she could not entertain a scenario other than a dingo taking the baby. She said: “To consider that it was done with something other than a dingo brings in such a range of coincidences with split second timing that it seems impossible.” Greg and Sally Lowe gave evidence of what they had seen and heard, all exculpatory of the Chamberlains. Bill and Judith West gave evidence of hearing a dingo growl before Lindy raised the alarm.
Six-year-old Aidan Chamberlain’s statement totally supported the account his mother gave. He said he had been with his mother during the entire period from Lindy Chamberlain being at the barbecue area with Azaria and the moment she had raised the alarm. He said: “While we were in the tent, mummy put bubby in the cot and then I went to the car with mummy and she got some baked beans. I followed her down to the barbecue area. When we got to the barbecue area mummy opened the tin of baked beans and daddy said, ‘Is that bubby crying?’ and mummy said, ‘I don’t think so’. Mummy went back to the tent and said, ‘A dingo’s got my baby!’.”
All the evidence was pointing to a dingo attack. Aidan’s evidence, together with that of Sally Lowe, provided a barrier to any suggestion that there had been foul play. But the ugly rumours would not go away, and the yobbo mentality had been stirred. When the inquest resumed on 9th February 1981, after the Christmas break, it was decided, in the light of a number of anonymous telephone threats that had been made against the Chamberlains, that they should have a bodyguard. The man assigned to the task, Constable Frank Gibson, might have been under instructions to pick up anything about the Chamberlains that could be used in evidence. Whether that was true or not, Gibson became very positive in his attitude towards the couple. Others never became positive. The fact that the Chamberlains were “different” became the focus of national attention. Pastor Wal Taylor, the SDA Church’s legal liaison officer, said: “Had this involved the Methodist or Baptist Churches, there may not have been the same misunderstanding. There are the mainstream and fringe churches and many people have tended to put us on the fringe.”
In the resumed inquest, the focus was on scientific evidence. From the start, the Chamberlains were at a disadvantage. A South Australian forensic biologist, Andrew Scott, confirmed there been a spray of blood on the tent wall. That was critical evidence that the baby had been attacked in the tent. By the time Scott tested the area he failed to get a positive result, possibly because the material had been affected by the waterproofing compound in the tent wall. Scott concluded that it was probably not human blood.
Other evidence potentially raised suspicion. Rex Kuchel, a forensic botanist from Adelaide, a part-time scientific adviser to the South Australian Police, had examined sand and vegetation embedded in the jumpsuit. He had been looking for pulled threads which he expected had an object covered in the jumpsuit material been dragged through vegetation. Rather, he thought, the jumpsuit – presumably with the baby’s body in it – had been buried in sand hills east of the campsite, then dug up and carried to where it was found at the base of Ayers Rock. In his experimentation, he had arranged for an effigy of a baby to be dressed in a jumpsuit and dragged through vegetation at Ayers Rock. The result, he said, was quite different. It was pointed out by Ashley Macknay that he had made his observations taken from pictures by a professional photographer rather than direct observation. There had been damage to the undergrowth by the person dragging the effigy. But he had not been on the spot and had not been able to determine what other people had been through that area.
Kuchel agreed under questioning that wild animals, and even domestic animals, sometimes buried their prey. But if the clothing was buried, where? Dr Barry Collins from the Minerals Department of South Australia said that 90 percent of the soil found on the baby’s clothing was consistent with the soil found at the site of the Chamberlains’ tent and 10 percent from the area round Ayers Rock. That seemed to support the burial theory. Had a dingo done the burying? Or had it been done, for whatever reason, by a person or persons? Sergeant Barry Cocks, of the South Australian Police, fresh from his involvement in the Edward Charles Splatt case, gave evidence supporting human intervention. From ruptures in the jumpsuit, he had concluded that a “bladed instrument”, a knife perhaps, or a pair of scissors, had been used. Kenneth Brown said he had examined the clothing and also examined dingo skulls and had concluded that a dingo’s teeth could not have done the damage to the baby’s clothing. So that laid it squarely on the line that there had been human intervention. Had it been someone at Ayers Rock? Or had it been the parents? And if so, why? Was it to fabricate evidence of a dingo attack?
A dingo expert, Dr Eric Newsome, senior researcher at the CSIRO Wildlife Research Division, said it was unlikely a dingo would have taken the baby but he did not discount the possibility. He said crows or eagles could have taken the clothing to where it was found at the base of Ayers Rock. That left open the possibility that a dingo had taken the baby but that person or persons had intervened afterwards. Another possibility, never brought up, was that in the week since Azaria disappeared and when the clothing was found at the base of Ayers Rock, an animal might have got at it and moved it of its own accord. Nevertheless, Macknay was not persuaded by much of the scientific evidence. In his submissions to Barritt on 19th February, he was particularly critical of the evidence of both Kuchel, Cocks and Brown, according to a report of proceedings by the Sydney Morning Herald. “What has happened, I submit, is that [they] were in pursuit of finding points to support the theory that