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, I would do a circuit and wait in the bushes near the scene of the tent. 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