In January 1980 Michael Chamberlain was posted to Mt Isa in western Queensland to be the SDA pastor. Michael continued his writing on health, religion and community for the Mt Isa Star. Azaria was born on 11th June 1980, the family decided on a holiday to the Northern Territory, including a stopover at Ayers Rock. They took their holiday in August 1980, when temperatures in the Australia inland were cooler, and tragedy struck at Ayers Rock, when Azaria, nine weeks and four days old, was reportedly snatched for the family tent by a dingo. A police investigation followed, then the first coroner’s inquest, which confirmed a dingo had taken the baby. After Stuart Tipple and Michael Chamberlain met on the Wyong street in September 1981, the three individuals – Michael, Lindy and Stuart – all fine, upstanding individuals who had nothing to answer for, came together and would, in essence, be locked together for forever after. Total innocents who had all the vitality and health of a New Zealand upbringing, nurtured in Christian households, they were to spend a major portion of their remaining lives unscrambling a mess they were not responsible for, but which had been created by the muddle, incompetence, bigotry and inflexibility of others.
Chapter Three
THE DINGO POUNCES
I hear your laughter in the night Enjoy it while you can The party’s just got under way Laugh awhile white man You weren’t invited to this place My heart is one huge stone But if you stay and eat and drink Don’t leave that child alone My spirit rises with the dusk As it has done before And when I come and take and steal I’ll leave you ripped and raw You’ll never laugh like this again My mark is stamped right through And anyone with any heart Will share your pain with you I hear your sad knock on my door I open it with shame Welcome to the desert Michael is your name The evil bone is pointed now The spirit has been sent Wait beside the fireside My thief is in your tent
– Lowell Tarling
The Chamberlain family arrived in Mt Isa in January 1980, and were only meant to stay there for 12 months. The plan was that the family would then move to Victoria where Michael would receive training in various aspects of the church’s health ministry. Mt Isa was a wealthy mining town founded after the discovery of one of the world’s richest deposits of copper, lead and zinc in 1923. Mining had been extensive, enormous wealth acquired, and as with all mining towns, the debris of mining, in particular copper dust, drifted across the landscape and deposited itself on every available surface. It settled onto the Chamberlain’s possessions, into their house, into the yellow Holden Torana Hatchback, and into Michael Chamberlain’s camera bag.
On 11th June 1980, Azaria Chantel Lauren Chamberlain was born at Mt Isa Hospital. Michael was reportedly making a nuisance of himself, insisting on taking photographs in the labour ward. The name Azaria was of Hebrew origin, and it meant “Blessed of God”. There was one incident, when Azaria apparently tumbled from a shopping trolley in a Mt Isa supermarket. However, a quick check with the family GP, Dr Irene Milne, showed she had not suffered any significant injury. In August 1980, the Chamberlains set off on a holiday to the Northern Territory. Michael loved the outdoors and wanted to go to the Top End. "I wanted to go to Darwin to catch barramundi," he said. "But Lindy had been to Uluru [the Aboriginal name for Ayers Rock, now in general use] before, at the age of 16, and wanted to go again. We meant to spend three days there, then go on to Darwin.”
The family arrived at Ayers Rock on Saturday, 16th August 1980. The motels at the site were rudimentary but there were facilities for aircraft and radio telephones were available, even though they were unable to be operated during certain times of the day. Perhaps the white, civilized, modern people who went there, fresh from air-conditioned luxury, really did not appreciate that they were coming into a place where there were fewer safety nets. People driving into the desert might run out of petrol, be nonplussed about what to do and find themselves in a situation where death is a distinct possibility. In remote areas, people with medical conditions could not just call for an ambulance. Someone bitten by a snake had a problem. Further north the problem was much the same. An out-of-towner found an inviting pool of water in the vast northern flatlands and plunged in, realising only in the last seconds of his life that he has chosen the domain of a crocodile. His body was later taken from inside the crocodile, in nine chunks. The Aboriginal people, so often disregarded, had a collective wisdom which had ensured their survival over millennia. But how many visitors referred to it?
The Chamberlains spent Sunday exploring the Ayers Rock area, during which Michael took the famous photograph of Lindy holding Azaria on the side of the rock. Michael and Lindy were in the camping area on the Sunday evening talking to two Tasmanian tourists, Greg and Sally Lowe, Lindy holding Azaria in her arms. Sally said later: “One of the few things that stands out in my mind after we were introduced to Lindy was, we asked what the baby’s name was. (Something I usually do to give you an idea if it’s a girl or boy – sometimes saved offending proud mums). The baby’s name was offered and so on. About this time Lindy had said how they had hoped for a girl and were so happy when the baby was a girl. The conversation stayed on babies for a while. Although we love Chantelle [Greg and Sally’s child], Greg and I wanted a boy. I think some mention was made of this. As I have some memory of Mike or Lindy saying something like – boys are easy, it’s harder to try for a girl (as though girls were special because of that). Our conversation went on to bushwalking, Tasmania and New Zealand and then on to Greg’s studies. Greg and Mike were talking about study at the time of Lindy’s return to the barbecue. Being more or less left out of the conversation, my ears were free.”
As they talked a dingo surprised them by leaping out of the darkness and grasping a mouse near their feet.
Greg Lowe, in a letter to Tipple a long time later, said he had offered Michael Chamberlain a beer which Chamberlain had declined, on the grounds he did not drink alcohol. “Lindy then offered the information that ‘a drinker doesn’t realise the effect it has on the family, that he ought to think not only the possible injury to his health but the effect this would have on his wife and children’s future’. (I think she disapproved of my casual attitude to beer-drinking),” he said. “This does indicate that she was concerned with future family health and welfare.” In the tent next to the Chamberlains’ tent, Bill and Judith West, a couple from Esperance in Western Australia, heard a canine growl which they took to be from a dingo, perhaps the growl of an animal warning another off.
On Lindy’s account she left the barbeque area with Azaria in her arms and Aidan beside her the and returned to the tent.After putting Azaria in the crib, Aidan announced he was still hungry.Lindy went to the back of the car, got a can of baked beans out and returned to the barbeque area with Aidan. A minute or so after that, Michael Chamberlain, Sally Lowe, and another camper, Gail Dawson, heard what they thought was a baby’s sharp cry from the direction of the tent. When Michael remarked on it, Lindy went to the tent to have a look, and according to her account, saw a dingo come from the entrance with something in its mouth. She could not make out what it was carrying. Her first instinct was to go into the tent to check the baby. The baby was gone. She raised the cry which transformed her from a housewife to a headline: “A dingo’s got my baby!”
Michael and the Lowes immediately ran to the tent. In his later account in a letter to Stuart Tipple, Greg Lowe said his wife Sally found a pool of blood – she estimated 8 by 16 square centimetres in area – on the floor of the tent. The blood was spread over articles of clothing, sleeping bags and other items. Writing to Tipple years later, Sally said: “I know there were several spots and I saw them in front of me and to the right. The immediate priority on the night, was to find the baby. Michael Chamberlain and Greg Lowe went in the direction the dingo was thought to have gone.” Greg said: “Then we extended the search pattern to a grid on the whole of the sand hill area to the east of the tent and other searching. I indicated to Mike that night that if I were a dingo,
