worst moment was when Stuart had private negotiations with Brian Martin QC, then the Solicitor-General for the Northern Territory, about a possible release for Lindy. Stuart told the SDA hierarchy, who distributed the information in a confidential document. That was leaked to me and, in accordance with what I understood to be my obligations as a journalist, I publicised it, and that threw a huge spanner into works as far as negotiations with the Northern Territory went. Stuart once snapped at me in a lift saying I was just another of the reptiles of the press, to which I was about to say: “You’re talking about the way I do my job. What about the way you do yours, which is, essentially, winning a case from time to time and keeping some people out of gaol!” I told him a long time later that that would have been my response and even then, he recoiled.
For some years Stuart was harassed by critics urging him to step aside and let another team have a go. The urgings even went to his clients. But the Chamberlains stuck with him, as did the barristers he had retained, but he would scarcely have been human had he not been plagued by the darkest thoughts as to whether his critics were right. His strategy at times took him right out of the legal realm and into that of politics, public campaigns and media coverage. His principal focus was on the scientific evidence, upon which his clients had been convicted and over which he had always held the gravest doubts. He did all this while running a legal practice and a family, and dealing with some of the complications of family life. A royal commission exonerated Michael and Lindy and, after years of dithering, the Northern Territory though its coroner reinstated the original verdict that a dingo had taken the baby. Stuart Tipple had been vindicated even though, in their personal lives, Michael and Lindy Chamberlain had paid a terrible price.
Stuart invited me to join him in writing a book after seeing a play, Letters to Lindy, by Alana Valentine, at Sydney University’s Seymour Centre in September 2016. He had diary notes and a pile of correspondence that had been sent to him and his clients during more than 30 years handling the case. The letters were from all points of view, some from scientists, others from church members, many from the public, including some that were malicious. That included a couple of postcards to Lindy purporting to be from Azaria in the afterlife and asking her why she had not given Azaria a chance at life too. When I undertook this task, I saw it as Stuart’s story but he persuaded me to include some of my own story. This book is the product of what word skills I possess after more than four decades in journalism, coupled with Stuart’s learned contributions. This book is the joint effort of both of us. I have referred to myself in the third person, which is a little awkward. The book is meant to be about Stuart’s journey, but our journey was so intertwined that I decided it should be both our journeys, but with the emphasis on Stuart. The problem with writing a profile of Stuart, I must say, is that he is absolutely straight down the line, unemotional and tough. He could never be called eccentric or idiosyncratic. He did feel things deeply, but when the chips were down, and the going became very, very tough, Stuart was there, unflappable and unyielding. If anyone could be relied on to see a matter through, it was always going to be him.
In January 2017 when news came through that Michael Chamberlain had died, from some blood disorder, Stuart and I came together again. We attended the memorial service, as did others who had been with the Chamberlains for years, including Andrew Kirkham, who had been one of their counsels, and John Bryson, who had written the ground-breaking book, Evil Angels. So were Lindy and the Chamberlain children, her husband, Rick, and Michael’s wife, Ingrid, and their daughter Zahra, all in their own way, locking away their own deepest, saddest memories. Michael Chamberlain had said towards the end that he would not want to wish on anyone “the life that I have had”. Everyone knew what he meant. This book is an attempt to portray the experience of Stuart Tipple and others as they shared the pain year after year as they grappled with this legal catastrophe.
Malcolm Brown 30th June 2017
Members of my legal fraternity like to tell me “Well the system got it right in the end”. They don’t like to admit how badly it failed the Chamberlains. The Chamberlains’ exoneration was obtained despite the system and would never have been achieved without a combination of extra ordinary circumstances and “people power”. I was persuaded by a publisher to write a legal text about the Chamberlain trial as a notable trial. After completing a draft, I attended Alana Valentine’s play Letters to Lindy. This play inspired me to put the legal text on hold and join with Malcolm Brown to tell this story which allows me to disclose letters I received from Lindy, her parents and key players wrestling with this tragic miscarriage.
Given the important part the media has played throughout I decided this book should be a joint effort with a reporter who has been part of this saga from its beginning. There was no one better suited than Malcolm Brown. Our relationship has often been prickly because as the consummate reporter Malcolm is driven by the need to tell the story whatever the consequences. Nothing was “off the record” to him even when he gave assurances to the contrary. Malcolm wanted this book to be entitled “Representing Lindy” and to be my story. I persuaded him that the better story was to combine our stories and our insights. I accepted the suggested title “The Dingo Took Our Lives”. because it better reflects how this case has affected us, our immediate families and so many others who became involved.
This book and the letters reveal not only the pain so many of us felt but also how Lindy remained loyal and true. Lindy addressed all her letters not just to me, but included my wife, Cherie, and my baby son, Jaemes. She recognized before I did how much they would sacrifice and how much I would need their support to see this through.
Stuart Tipple
Chapter One
GUESS WHO I MET ON THE
WAY TO THE SHOPS!
To be, or not to be – that is the question Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them.
– Hamlet
On a fine sunny morning in early September 1981, lawyer Stuart Tipple, was walking along the main street of Wyong on the central NSW coast. At 29 years of age, six years out from Law School, he had no particular worries. He had a fine, sun-drenched lifestyle, a beautiful wife, Cherie, and a good employer: Brennan and Blair, Solicitors, Gosford. A practising Seventh-day Adventist (SDA), Tipple had already established top-level contact with senior members of his church. Among other things he had sat on the board of the SDA Church’s hospital, “The San”, at Wahroonga, in Sydney’s Northern suburbs. Alongside him on the board was Dr Jim Cox, president of Avondale College, Cooranbong, the SDA tertiary education establishment in the Lake Macquarie hinterland on the Central Coast. Tipple in his professional life had taken on tough briefs, as a public solicitor, handling the affairs of hardened criminals. Having seen enough of how that world worked, he had then established himself in a good provincial practice, far enough from Sydney to escape the bustle but near enough not be left out in the sticks. He had fallen on his feet.
There was a cloud, fairly remote, on the horizon: the Azaria Chamberlain case. It interested but it did not affect him. Being a Seventh-day Adventist, his attention had naturally been attracted to it, and he had met SDA Pastor Michael Chamberlain as a boy in New Zealand. At that point he viewed it as someone who might see a storm in the distance. Little did he know that that storm would break over him, and that for decades to come he would be at the centre of a disaster.
At Ayers Rock in central Australia, on 17th August 1980, a nine-week old baby, Azaria Chantel Loren Chamberlain, had disappeared, reportedly taken away in the jaws of a dingo. It had been such an unusual event, seemingly unprecedented and not expected of coyote-type creatures whose normal response to human intrusion was to scuttle away. From the outset there had been doubt, which had quickly evolved into ugly rumours about the parents, SDA pastor Michael Leigh Chamberlain and
