Michael Chamberlain returns to Uluru
ZAHRA CHAMBERLAIN: Hi, I'm Zahra Chamberlain and I'm on a trip with Channel 7. We've all gone to Uluru with my dad. This is the last place where Azaria was before she was taken. And the place that really...shaped the rest of my dad's life. I think that today, Dad's gonna find it very emotional going back to this place. And I'm glad that I'm here to support him because I don't think he'd feel very well, being alone on this one.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: I think the tent site.....must have been very close to over here. I remember that the sand was red. (SIGHS) I think it's here. We're here.
ROSS COULTHART: This is the first time in 32 years.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Yeah. It's just a bit overwhelming, to go through this. Thank you for coming.
It was about this time when the sun came up you could start seeing a lot more clearly at the campsite. Everybody very expectant, really all looking forward to the day.
ZAHRA CHAMBERLAIN: What was Azaria like?
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Well.....she was a very active and really very strong little child. She was only about 6 pounds 7 ounces in old terms when she was born, but I remember Lindy being so very proud and quite amazed at her strength. But, you know, it was almost as if she was a little Sturt Pea out here. She was so beautiful. Just a very special little child. She was our first daughter.
ZAHRA CHAMBERLAIN: Yeah.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: We prayed for her...and we got her. It was beautiful.
ROSS COULTHART: The photographs of you and Lindy through the very early days of your marriage, you are very happy, clearly a very loving couple.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Most certainly. It was gonna be a great life for us. Lindy is a fun-loving person who loves mischief, and this is part of her personality and that's part of the reason why I liked her so much.
ROSS COULTHART: She's a strong woman.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: She's a strong woman. She's confident, she's competitive and she will take people on it.
And she won't take rubbish from anybody.
ROSS COULTHART: This shot places your tent and the Torana...
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: That's right.
ROSS COULTHART:..in what used to be the campground at Uluru.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Yes.
ROSS COULTHART: And the position where you're standing to take this photograph is very likely where dingo actually came from.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Virtually, I'd say.
ROSS COULTHART:So talk me through what happened -where Azaria was and all of that.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Yeah, well, this is always the tough one because I start to relive this... I guess it was around about 8 o'clock and, uh, I was chatting to Greg and Sally Lowe...
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: They're people from Tasmania?
ROSS COULTHART: People from Tasmania. We're having a bit of fun.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: And Lindy had just come back from the tent. She had put Azaria down and there was just a lull in the conversation and I said to Lindy something like this, I said, "Is that Azaria?" And she said, "I didn't hear anything," and I said, "You'd better go and check".
ROSS COULTHART: Now, was the tent zipped up?
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: No.
ROSS COULTHART: Why not?
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Well, it's a moot point. Lindy left the tent last. I think that she didn't see the need to zip it up. I believe that the tent could be zipped up - it was a zippable. And we had a discussion about this later, "Why didn't you zip up the tent?"
And that was a pretty tough question for her to answer.
ROSS COULTHART: I think she has suggested that the tent was damaged, that the zipper was damaged it wasn't possible to zip up.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: I believe it was damaged later.
ROSS COULTHART: Talk me through what happened next.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: She must have got about half, three quarters of the way when she saw a dingo coming out of the tent. And then she called out words to the effect, "Get out!" And then she opened the tent, looked in and then she said words to the effect,
"My God, that dog's got my baby." Or, "That dingo's got my baby." And those words, of course, have become household words. All hell broke loose. Everybody around the campsite that I was with, they just up and raced towards the tent.
ROSS COULTHART: There was a witness who said you didn't search, that you didn't join in a human chain search. She said you said that a dingo has taken our baby and she is probably dead by now. "Whatever happens, it is God's will."
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: I didn't say that.
ROSS COULTHART: Another claimed... and it is quite a hurtful claim....
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: As they are.
ROSS COULTHART: is that Pastor Michael, quote, "was a very strange guy, seriously strange." He commended God's decision to take his daughter.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Rubbish.
ROSS COULTHART: Not true?
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Utterly untrue.
BARBARA: Hello.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Barbara, hello. It's wonderful to meet you. I owe...a tremendous debt of gratitude to you. And I've never been able
to tell you.
ZAHRA CHAMBERLAIN: I knew that there were Aboriginal trackers but I didn't realise what they had to say.
BARBARA: SPEAKS ABORIGINAL DIALECT
TRANSLATOR: I saw the tracks of the dingo at the tent with a baby. She saw the tracks and she believed that it was a dingo who was carrying a baby.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: That's right.
ROSS COULTHART: She has never spoken before outside of the court about what she saw that night.
ZAHRA CHAMBERLAIN: Hearing that she saw tracks, dingo tracks, and confirms that it was carrying a baby, not just anything - it was definitely carrying a baby, it really did just amaze me again that that was said publicly and then ridiculed and ignored.
MAN: He said that both Lindy and Michael Chamberlain had lied constantly and persistently.
MAN 2: The virulent campaign of gossip and rumour...
MAN 3: There was no evidence that a dingo had been involved and it therefore followed that the child had been killed.
ROSS COULTHART: I want to roll back to the moment that the jury came into the court. How were you feeling?
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Our defence had said that you can bank on the evidence we have given - you'll be going home very soon. So we were totally unprepared.
ROSS COULTHART: As the foreman read out the verdict...
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Mmm.
ROSS COULTHART: ...what happened?
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: I guess it was another 'oh, my God' moment. They've really stuffed it now and we are paying, totally, for other people's prejudice and mistakes.
ROSS COULTHART: I just don't believe that's what went through your head then, Michael. And I think part of the problem with you is your reserve. If I had been falsely accused of killing my child and a jury foreman stood up and said, "You're guilty and your wife is guilty of murder," I don't think I would sit there and clinically assess the merits of a miscarriage of justice.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: You're asking me a question...
ROSS COULTHART: I'd be bloody angry.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: ..30 years later.
ROSS COULTHART: Were you angry? Come on, give me the real Michael Chamberlain.What did you feel?
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Denial. This can't be happening.
ROSS COULTHART: What was the sentence she was given, it was something 30 years, or something horrific.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Life with hard labour. And life meant life.
ROSS COULTHART: Why was your father, and Lindy, singled out and accused of doing this dreadful thing when we all know now it was completely untrue?
ZAHRA CHAMBERLAIN: I think it was very unlucky that they were singled out but I think it all goes back to the Northern Territory and the government was very worried about it ruining the tourism. And if it got out that a dingo was going around eating children that there'd be...
ROSS COULTHART: It would damage tourism.
ZAHRA CHAMBERLAIN: ...there'd be a lot of consequences for tourism.
ROSS COULTHART: Do you think that the police that were there on the night initially accepted your story?
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Yes.
ROSS COULTHART: So why did they change their minds?
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: I think they were contacted and I think they were spoken to.
ROSS COULTHART: Because it was politically unpalatable for the tourism industry?
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: It was inconvenient truth, to coin a phrase.
ROSS COULTHART: What do you think it was?
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: I think they had an agenda, quite frankly. I think that certain things were said to them... "This is the way you've gotta run this
"and don't come back until you've got some good evidence "regardless of its authenticity."
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: The actual jail time was damaging. She became institutionalised. She became quite a different person.
ROSS COULTHART: What changed?
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Well, she became more assertive and she started to run her own ship rather than us trying to work it together. And institutionalisation is a terrible thing on a human being and she was there more than 18 months.
ROSS COULTHART: You could have walked away. You could have just got on with the rest of your life, dealt with the immense task of looking after your children. Why didn't you?
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: I loved my wife. I knew we were innocent. I knew we were right in what we said and I'm no coward.
ROSS COULTHART: Azaria is the sister you never knew.
ZAHRA CHAMBERLAIN: That's right. It doesn’t seem like she ever was my sister because I have only seen photos and know what I've been told but I do have emotional connections now, through what Dad feels.
ROSS COULTHART: Has it been hard for you, personally?
ZAHRA CHAMBERLAIN: Yes. I have been teased in the past.
ROSS COULTHART: How did you deal with it?
ZAHRA CHAMBERLAIN: You just... you just don't let it get to you.
ROSS COULTHART: There was also this dreadful thing that happened with your rabbits at one stage.
ZAHRA CHAMBERLAIN: Yes. Someone, after leaving a horrible note at our doorstep a few weeks prior, someone came in while we were on holiday just before Christmas and slaughtered all my rabbits, either with a boot or a brick, and tore apart their rabbit pen.
ROSS COULTHART: And they were your pets.
ZAHRA CHAMBERLAIN: They were. There was nine of them and they were all killed.
ROSS COULTHART: What did the note say? Do you mind me asking?
ZAHRA CHAMBERLAIN: The note was very nasty towards my dad and it stated how he was being a disgrace to the church and it used some very coarse language and it was signed by "The Magic Dingo Claw".
ROSS COULTHART: So it was a direct reference to the whole Azaria story?
ZAHRA CHAMBERLAIN: Yes, it was.
ZAHRA CHAMBERLAIN: I'm very interested in seeing what this inquest brings to my dad. It's been pretty... pretty tough to deal with. Over the years leading up to this, it's been getting much worse and he's been fraying at the edges.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: I feel confident but, um, still pretty nervous about this.
ROSS COULTHART: What if it doesn't go the way you expect?
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: There is no plan B for this.
ROSS COULTHART: There really has to be a finding. There has to be.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: There must, because it's right, it'll be the truth and I just can't see how, possibly another inquest can get it wrong.
WOMAN (CORONER) : The name of the deceased was Azaria Chantelle Lauren Chamberlain, born in Mount Isa, Queensland, on June 11, 1980. This inquest has been reopened to receive information not available to previous inquests. My task is to consider and determine whether the whole of the evidence is sufficient to determine a cause of death. The formal findings, as required by the Act, that I make are that Azaria Chamberlain died at Uluru, then known as Ayres Rock on August 17, 1980. The cause of her death was as the result of being attacked and taken by a dingo.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: This battle to get to the legal truth about what caused Azaria's death has taken too long. However, I am here to tell you that you can get justice, even when you think that all is lost.
ROSS COULTHART: When we took you back to the campsite...
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Mmm.
ROSS COULTHART: ...I think, for the first time, Australians got to see just how much this awful tragedy hurt Michael Chamberlain. I think, for just one moment...
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Mmm.
ROSS COULTHART: ...you let that reserve drop.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: (SIGHS) Yep.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: I don't need to stay here any longer.
MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: There, I was able to have...I guess, a moment of true grief, after the shock of being falsely accused...and now starting to feel that people were realising that they had to get it right for us. I started feeling a lot more free now to accept.
