We searched extensively ‘close to home’ in quite a large radius.”
Other campers went immediately to search the sand hills, and were soon joined by rangers. A local Aboriginal elder, Nipper Winmatti, on his later account saw dingo tracks outside the tent and he followed them. He said he saw blood in the sand. “We first tracked the dingo from the back of the tent,” he said. “It came around and went inside the tent.” He had followed the dingo tracks towards the tiny Ayers Rock township, which comprised a collection of motels and other buildings. The dingo had apparently been carrying a burden, but the tracks had petered out in the spinifex. Others saw evidence of dingo tracks in the sand. The head park ranger at Uluru National Park, Derek Roff, went tracking that night with a local Aboriginal, Ngui Minyintiri. They followed the tracks and drag marks for 15 metres before losing them, then traced them back to a point 17 metres from the tent and in direct line with the tent. He had backtracked to within 12 metres of the road running beside the camp site.
The Chamberlains stayed near the tent in the freezing cold for several hours waiting for news. About midnight they were persuaded to go to a nearby motel. A local police officer and the camp nurse, Bobby Downs, helped them transfer clothing and bedding from the tent into the car and the police four-wheel drive vehicle before driving them to the motel. Greg Lowe told Tipple later that they might have unwittingly transferred some of the spilled blood onto their clothing. The tent remained as they had left it. Greg Lowe posed the question in a letter to Tipple much later: “Could any of these blood-stained articles … and effects account for any alleged traces of … blood in the car, especially if they were bundled into the car before the Chamberlains left for the motel?”
Word went out nationally that a baby had been taken by a dingo at Ayers Rock. Reporters scrambled to get there. People scratched their heads and wondered. A dingo?
On the Sunday morning, a motel employee at Ayers Rock, Elizabeth Prell, took breakfast to the Chamberlains. She later said she saw a blood stain on a sleeping bag that had been removed from the tent. The stain was “about three inches” in diameter. At Ayers Rock, Aboriginal trackers scoured the area further out from Ayers Rock. They found dingo tracks at the base of Ayers Rock, then argued among themselves about their significance. Tracks made by the searchers on the night and next day complicated things. At the tent, there seemed much clearer evidence that the dingo had been there. Constable Frank Morris, the police constable stationed at Ayers Rock, found dingo tracks along the tent. He also saw paw prints when he lifted the bottom edge of the tent where it had ballooned out near where the bassinet stood.
Two police officers who arrived from Alice Springs, Inspector Michael Gilroy and Sergeant John Lincoln found paw prints immediately behind the tent together with a wet patch in the sand which they thought might have been saliva. They took photographs and a sample of the wet sand but the photos did not turn out and the wet sand was never properly tested. Gilroy looked carefully at the baby’s bassinet and found animal hairs which he thought might be dingo hairs. A camper, Murray Haby, found an impression in a sand dune near the camping area which appeared to him to have been made when a dingo put something down. He showed it to Derek Roff. The imprint on the sand reminded Roff of crepe bandage or, as he said later in evidence, “very consistent with elastic band sort of material". It was a perfect description of the material of the jumpsuit Azaria was wearing.
That, surely, should have been enough. A dingo had been there. As in all police investigations, the first thing to look for is what the perpetrator has left behind. In this case it was tracks, the drag mark and the imprint of fabric on the sand. That in combination with, the dingo growl, the baby’s cry and Lindy’s report of seeing a dingo, should have been enough. Of course, in the initial period, it was. The principal objective now was to find the baby – or more probably its remains – and, if possible, the dingo.
Word was now well and truly out. Lindy’s parents, Cliff and Avis Murchison, were retired and living in Nowra on the NSW south coast. Alex Murchison was working for Shoalhaven Shire Council, as it then was, laying sewerage pipes, when his foreman approached and told him the news.
At Ayers Rock, the searching continued all Monday, during which Michael was at pains to get black-and-white photographic film so he could take pictures for a newspaper that had contacted him. His actions were, he said later, to warn people what might happen, but some people even in those early stages were mystified by his actions, wondering about his priorities. On the Tuesday, Aboriginal trackers followed dingo tracks for six kilometres from the campsite into sand hill country but found it doubled back and then the tracks became lost near the reservoir at the township. That day, Michael and Lindy Chamberlain, left for Mt Isa. There were still people searching and their decision to leave raised eyebrows. Michael and Lindy had decided there was no hope of finding the baby alive. Michael Chamberlain, having a traumatised family, decided his priority now was to look after them.
In the meantime, police packaged up the Chamberlains’ tent and its contents and put them in a cardboard box to be taken to Darwin for scientific examination. It was, in retrospect, a clumsy way of handling evidence, some of which, like any blood spray on the tent wall, was fragile, hard to see and easily destroyed. It must also be taken into account that all this had happened in a remote area. Distance was difficult. Communications were difficult. The radio telephone cut out for several hours each day. At that stage there was only the vaguest thought that one of the family might have been responsible for the child’s death, but the second safeguard, the expertise and professionalism of investigating police, was starting to fail.
The Chamberlain family arrived at Mt Isa and was now the centre of attention. Lindy’s parents, Cliff and Avis Murchison, and Lindy’s brother, Alex Murchison, went to Mt Isa. Alex said: “I remember mum held up the space blanket and there were muddy paw-prints on it. I could see the tiny pin-holes of light shining through where the dingo’s claws had gone through the space blanket. There was mud on the paw prints, the soil was still caked on.”
At Mt Isa, the gossip and rumour-mongering had begun. Members of the local SDA Church rallied around the Chamberlains. Lindy was also consoled by a close friend, Jennifer Ransom, and told her that she would be reunited with her baby in Eternity. According to Mrs Ransom, Lindy said: “I know that if I am true to the Lord for the rest of my life, she will be back in my arms as pure and beautiful as when I put her down to sleep”. A dry-cleaner at Mt Isa, Jennifer Prell, said Michael Chamberlain had brought in a sleeping bag which had “seven or eight” stains on it and had said he wanted it cleaned. The stains, potentially, constituted more evidence that blood had been spilled in the tent.
The Chamberlains’ tent arrived in Darwin at the bottom of a cardboard box on Thursday 21st August. The box was handed to Myra Fogarty, a police officer who had had three months’ experience in forensic work but no formal training. Her superior, Sergeant Bruce Sandry, told her to look for hair and blood. Fogarty unpacked the box and examined it. She was not told about any blood spray on the tent wall and did not see it. She assumed she was looking for human hairs and plucked some of her hair out to use as a control. She did not do any “lifting”, using adhesive tape to pick up what particles there might have been on surfaces in and on the tent. What she did say when she made her report was that there was less blood than she would have expected had there been a dingo attack. That was a careless comment on her part. It carried a number of assumptions, principally that the dingo would have torn the baby’s flesh and tossed it around in its jaws, spilling blood. If a dingo had snatched a baby in the way it apparently did, it would more likely to have been quick, a second or two. The baby would then have been whisked away by the dingo. Its teeth would all probability have occluded the blood in the wounds, preventing much of it from spilling. Her comment about expecting more blood was to rebound on her.
The next development came on Sunday, 24th August, when a tourist, Wallace Victor Goodwin, found Azaria’s jumpsuit, singlet and nappy at the base of Ayers Rock, 3.5 kilometres from the campsite. It was 20 metres from a dingo lair, though at the time not even the rangers knew the lair was there. There was no sign of the body. Goodwin
