December 21, 2024 • 50 mins
“A dingo’s got my baby.” These words changed Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton’s life forever. In Part 1 of this gripping two-episode series, she opens up about the tragedy, the media storm, and the fight for justice. Don’t miss it.
Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton’s story is one of Australia’s most infamous miscarriages of justice. In Part 1 of this two-episode series on Pure Grit, Lindy shares her harrowing experience as the target of one of the nation’s most publicised trials following the tragic loss of her 9-week-old baby, Azaria. Her statement, “A dingo’s got my baby,” divided a nation in 1980 and led to her wrongful conviction for Azaria’s murder.
This raw and emotional conversation explores the days leading up to Azaria’s disappearance, the fateful camping trip at Uluru, and the extraordinary miscarriage of justice that followed. Lindy reflects on the unfathomable pain of being accused of her own child’s death and the subsequent media frenzy that painted her as a villain. Her resilience and determination to clear her name amidst widespread public scrutiny are a testament to her unbreakable spirit.
This episode delves into Lindy’s early life, her family’s struggles during the trial, and her insights into the failures of the legal system. It’s a story of strength, injustice, and the unyielding fight for truth.
Stay tuned for Part 2, where Lindy shares the details of her time in prison and how she ultimately fought to reclaim her freedom.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Pure Grit with Paula McGrath. If you search
the word grit, you'd see that it means to have courage,
show strength of character, passion, and perseverance. Throughout the series,
paul chat to guests from all walks of life who
have shown pure grit to get to where they are now.
(00:24):
Paula Paula, yeah, look, he looks fine. I've done the intro,
so ready for you to talk now? Yeah, you do
your talking things.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome to a brand new season of Pure Grit, and
I'm starting the season off with a guest who has
been actually in my vision from the day I conceive
Pure Grit as an idea as a podcast. This guest
stirred huge emotions and passion for justice within myself from
the young age of eight years of age. Which's weld
famous but really for all the wrong reasons. Famous for
(00:54):
being Australia's most shameful miscarriage of justice for the wrong
ful conviction and murder of a nine week old beautiful baby,
Azariah her words, A Dingo's got my baby will never
actually leave us, but sadly divided our nation in nineteen eighty.
She's endured three long years in Darwin's prison. She was
sentenced to jail while she was actually pregnant with her
fourth child. She's a mom, a wife, a grandmother, and author,
(01:18):
the most resilient, courageous woman who I admire so much.
Please welcome Lindy Chamberlain creaton to Pure Grit. Hi Lindy,
Hi Paula. How are you doing.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I'm not doing too bad.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
You're not doing too badly. I have actually wanted you. Basically,
I wanted you as my first guest ever on Pure Grit,
but for some reason I couldn't find you.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
And I've found you. Found you website that tells you,
I know, to get to be you.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Actually, you have a fantastic website. Actually I really like
it a lot. I've been. I had a really good
look through your website. It's and then I got ahold
of Wreck, your lovely husband, and then I found you,
so it's easy.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
The website was self preservation for Wreck because we got
so many requests for the same thing. He decided to
do his research, said he knew a lot about it,
but he certainly wasn't around at the time, and to
(02:33):
create the website so that answers were there and Funnily enough,
despite that, I know a lot of teachers do their
school assignments on it, and then their students send me
an email and say, I just had a few questions
(02:55):
to ask you. Could you ask me this? And it's
obvious that they copy and pasted their assignment and are
too lazy to read the website. So those ones just
don't get answers.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
They so Ricked did the website for you?
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Rick did all the website. I haven't even read some
of it, So there you go.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
So, Lindy, where'd you grow up?
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Uh? Well, which year?
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Well? From childhood like schooling, early schooling.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
I was born in New zealand learned to talk over there,
hence the mixed accent, which still has some keyboard unit,
a little bit of Kiwi.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah yes, yet not so soll.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Hi. I still say certain words the Kwie way because
my mum was a Kiwi, but my dad was Victorian,
and we came back to Victoria when I was about
eighteen months old, and then we promptly lived in a
(04:14):
lot of places because my dad was a Seventh Day
and his pastor and all Pea cases were known as
pastor's kids. If your father was any sort of clergyman
(04:35):
eure Ape p K. He came, Yeah, a pastor's kid,
and you transfer a lot. So as a kid, the
longest I had ever lived anywhere was four years in
Saleh in Victoria. The shortest I it was four months
(05:03):
in mill Dura.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
But basically I lived all over Victoria until I was
twenty one or twenty actually, when my dad got transferred
to Broken Hill. And then at twenty one I got
married and we moved to Tasmania, and from Tasmania moved
(05:33):
to Queensland. So Aiden was born in Tasmania. Reagan was
born in Queensland, Azaria was born in Queensland but pretty
close to the NT border, and then Parlia was born
(05:55):
in the NT. So I had one Tazzy devil to
banana benders and Darwinian.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Oh wow, so that's you didn't really move around. So
obviously you met Michael through the church. Is that how
you two met?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Actually going on a trip with my parents and dropped
in to see my boyfriend who was at Avondale University
and he introduced me to Michael because they were actually roommates.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Oh wow, Okay, there you go. You had a boyfriend
and then your mate found a new boyfriend.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Yeah, but it was eighteen months or so after I
first met him, before I started dating him, and I
had broken off with the my previous boyfriend by then.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Oh wow, So that's so that's the story of where
you So you would have moved around a lot of
schooling different schoo or your home.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Sees because of the four years in Sale, I didn't
have so many primary schools and then went to Sale
and Warningville. Okay, yeah, but high school was a different matter.
I went to Girls Secondary School in Ballarat, girls High
(07:25):
in Brunsqueak. Wow the state I had five high schools.
So yeah, that's seven, eight nine was Horsham High, part
(07:47):
of part of ten was Horsham High. And then after
a rat Wow, and I had at eighteen months in
Ararat and then off to Ballaratte. Not BALLARATTE. Oh, I
(08:21):
was just down from Wangaratta in Victoria.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Was that that was that? When you finished school?
Speaker 3 (08:28):
My goodness, I've done a blank Banilla Banilla. So yeah,
I did year twelve in Banilla.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
So was that hard to forge friendships with all that
moving around?
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Well? I guess it must have been because despite my
noteieting being easy to find I have only once ever
been asked to a school reunion.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Where was that?
Speaker 3 (08:59):
That was the error rat one. Somebody wrote to me
and said their brother had been in my class. Didn't
say who the brother was, and they were married, so
I had no idea who it was. Probably is. The
letter did not get to me for about three years
(09:21):
after the reunion happened, and I did try replying and say, okay,
so who's your brother? But I never had any reply
from that, so I figured that, yeah, nobody remembers me
(09:44):
much from school. I was fairly quiet because I was
always the new kid.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, you would have been, yeah, do you have any
brothers or sisters?
Speaker 3 (09:53):
I have an older brother, but he's start and half
years older than me, so it was like had you know,
two single kids. There was no one around when he
was little, and and then pretty much by the time
I get old enough to appreciate him, he was then
(10:14):
after boarding school.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
So oh so he went to boarding for all right,
So I didn't have him around. No Ah, So what
so you were just going for obviously you and Michael
are taking the kids just for a holiday to Ularu
back in nineteen eighty just a family too, because you
(10:36):
were living not far from the border.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yes, well, Michael wanted to go to Dama because he
wanted to do photography. Yes, and having visited isrock before.
In fact, I had my name feeling near at the
front of the first book that was ever put on
top of a rock.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Wow. And in those you were climbing the rock then obviously.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Yeah, my parents and I and a friend of my
father's or climbed. There was no chain in those days,
so it was an interesting climb. We went right across
the rock to the other end, and they'd had a
ten year drought and there was dried, cracked mud in
(11:37):
places where that obviously been water catchment spots on the
top of the rock, and poking around in them we
found live fish. As soon as you unburied them, they
flopped about and it's like, oh quick, put them back
in there, thing and put them back in there. Presumably
(11:57):
they lived, but I've read since when the when the
water comes and they have of a pilder swimming up
they come again.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Now that's incredible.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
It's a thing with the rock, very fascinating. And it
was those bars around there. At the time we sat
on the top, we'd taken our lunch up with us
and sat on the top and in a one hundred
and eighty degree do you get from certain spots? We
(12:33):
were able to count the few she oaks and salt
pushes that had survived absolutely nothing like what is there
now and the big panicle. You know, this is natural.
You can't touch it. Nature has other ideas that comes
(12:55):
and goes.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Yes, Well, I actually thought of you. I didn't go
to as rocket or the hotel probably very early two thousands,
Probably maybe two thousand and two or something like that
was my first visit there, and that was when you
could still actually climb the rock, but you were asked
(13:18):
not to, so I actually chose not to and just
did the walk around the rock. But I thought of
you as soon as I went there. I just thought
of you, Lindy. I just I found it's so beautiful
and so spiritual in the middle of our country. Like
I really I did think of you though. I just
(13:39):
felt like it was just such a magical place. So
I know why you were there and camping there, and.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
It's just beautiful. It's just it's beautiful country. Well it
was sven more magical when you were the only ones there. Yeah,
there was no one else inside. And I remember one
night we pulled off the road to camp which I
had tired pull over. We had to just straight onto
(14:09):
the Ghibba plane and We're like, of all the people,
we've only met one car today, and why on earth
did we have to camp so close? Because we could
literally hear what they were saying around the campfire, but
we couldn't even see the glow of the campfire. And
(14:32):
we got up the next morning and continued traveling and
we expected to see them just over the next stand hill.
It was about two and a half miles before we
found their camping and they were still there talking and
it was just, you know, obviously the angle, the way
(14:55):
the wind was going, and the silence is just phenomenal.
But there isn't that sense there anymore. It's gone with
all the people that the tourists. That feeling is gone,
but I'll never forget it. And so when Michael said
(15:16):
he wanted to go up and he wanted to take
some pictures in Darwin, I'm like, where after pictures, we
have got to go to the rock first, and you
come out free ways that you go north or south.
We've got time. Let's go to there, go south to
the first eight days and then go north for the rest.
(15:42):
And well we did the first half of the trip
and that was it.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
So you didn't know anybody that was their camping at
the time.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
You just know.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
No, there was no friends with you or anything. It
was just your family. No just and then were you
different story. Now they're all like family. Keep in touch
with me and keep in touch with one another, and
people that were there at the actual time in nineteen
(16:14):
eighty that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Fact. Just a couple of weeks ago we had reck
and I had lunch with Wally and Margo Goodwin caught
up with them for the day because they're bits of
well in the Marinica you call them snowbirds because they
(16:37):
flee from the snowy countries and go to Florida. Here
that's just grain omads. However, me and Margo, we were
escaping from Melbourne winter and they come up to within
a half an hour from where we live, stop along
(16:58):
the sunny coast for a number of weeks and travel around.
So over year we get to catch up with them
at least once and then of course in Victoria when
we go down there.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
But that so they become you know, lifelong friends from
being there at the time that Zaria was taken.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
And everyone else we contact by phone or that's the road,
send one another messages or something. Talk at least once
a year.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
So when when Zaria was taken from the tent in
nineteen eighty but they didn't go, was it Reagan that
was in the tent as well asleep?
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (17:47):
And didn't he didn't he feel like a puppy on
his back or something as well?
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Well, he did, but we didn't realize he had for
several years.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Ah Okay, he.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
During all the kfuffle of the trial, he uninquests, etc.
He stayed at a mate's place a number of times,
and one night when he's there, he had a nightmare,
which he apparently had quite often, but he woke up
(18:33):
screaming and told them he could feel it. Didn't go
walking on him again, and they didn't want to worry us.
Their son was the same age, they confidered him, etcetera.
And when it came to the Royal Commission, we knew
(18:58):
by then that he had been awake and we tried
to find this person because they said, look, you know,
four years old, they can get suggestions in their memory. Whatever,
you need to have someone that corroborates this memory right
(19:23):
from very early on. So then we asked everybody we
could think of, all his friend's moms, and I couldn't
remember who told us, and we just couldn't find them.
(19:46):
So although they wanted him in the witness box, they said, well,
we can't because we can't get that other one, whereas
eight and at six is old enough definitely have his
own memories. And it wasn't until a couple of years
(20:10):
after Reck and I were married, and I was chatting
with friends in America who had also moved over there.
They were in LA and we'd gone down and was
staying with them and chatting about various things. And my
(20:32):
friend said to me, Aiden gave evidence. Why didn't they
have Reagan with the didnto you know walking on him? There?
Isn't that more relevant than Aiden? And I said yes,
But we could never find anyone to corroborate the testimony.
I tried everybody I could think of, because I know
(20:53):
somebody was with him, and she looked at me and said, oh, Lindy,
that was me. No, she said, being over here, nobody
ever told us that you were looking for her what
he knew, so never said anything. And it's like, oh, well,
(21:16):
because they'd moved, I didn't. I didn't think of them.
I was still thinking of all his local mates. But
young lighton and got overseas, so out of sight, out
of mind. But we know now. But the first time
he evera mentioned it to us was not long after
(21:39):
Reck and I were married and we got a puppy
and ah, he was a Australian shepherd, bought a Collie
crossed with a Saint Bernard couldn'ts went across. So as
(22:04):
a puppy he was like the size of a large poodle,
a four months big. Yeah. And Reagan was lying on
the floor and the puppy walked over his back and
he shot upwards, tipping the puppy off, scared it and
(22:28):
he sort of shivered and said, oh no, that felt
like they didn't go walking across me again.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
So he really does remember it.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
And we were like God smacked both reackain, I like
you remember that still? Oh yeah, oh wow, and he
occasionally still has nightmass ah. Okay. Then as an adults,
I was able to say to him, well, when I
(22:58):
came in the tent, why didn't you answer me? And well,
at first I thought you were it come back to
get me, and so I decided to pretend like I
was dead, And it wasn't until you kicked me really hard,
which you know, I was scrambling through the blankets at
(23:20):
that stage, and when he answered, I nudged him gently
with my foot and no reply. So I gave him
a lot of hard at one and he sort of
m and then I realized, no, he's all right, So
I left him. But he didn't talk to anyone or
anything then for about another hour, and then they said,
(23:43):
you think he's sleeping, but he's actually awake in the tent.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Right, So when that panic hit that as I was gone.
Wasn't there also like ooriginal trackers that found footprints and
found drag marks and why you know, which that's what
they're incredible. They know the land and they know diding
(24:08):
goes and they know foot printce how was that all not?
Was it the police that were discounting the.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Original funny scrambling permanent questions? That one wonders because I
don't know whether it was deliberate misconceptions or just bumbling
(24:37):
the cop on the night. Had you know. Mainly it
was drunk tourists or camping fine or something or rather,
and he was barely thirty. He did a good job,
but because he knew he didn't know what he was doing,
(25:00):
relied heavily on the head ranger, Derek Roth, who was
an x South African police inspector or something. He had
a fairly high rank and he was used to dealing
with animal attacks in South Africa, right, big bigger animals
(25:24):
were talking lions and byenas and what have you. And
he called him over and the rangers immediately found tracks
around the tent. They went the when I called, I
(25:49):
had seen it didn't going into the sandhills, and everybody
went that direction. Well when Roth came over, and he
was the only want to look in the tent that
night to get the actual you know, it's like you
need to look in the tent. You need to look
(26:10):
at the tent, And eventually the cop did because he
kept asking me questions. But I thought the ranger was
also a cop because the uniforms are the same color,
the details the different. In the dark. Because the cop
was deferring to this guy, I thought he was his scenior.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
He wasn't.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
They were all like, yeah, everybody knows what's happened. We
don't have to preserve the scene, we don't have to
do anything later, it was like, why did you mess
it up? Why did you this? Why did you that?
While we're hiding. However, everybody there at the night knew
it was a dingo, yes, and one of the rangers.
(27:04):
I don't know whether one of the rangers went with
them or not, but there was a senior scout master
who was very used to tracking from his scouting. He
went with a group of Aboriginals and some others who
followed the footprints of not where I said the dinger
(27:26):
had gone, but the ones tent, and they realized there
were drag marks and what could have either been salive
or blood. They were talking in their own language. The
scout master, who happened at the time to be the
(27:49):
head master of a school in Victoria, so no idiot no,
was with them, and they found the place where they
said it had been put down, and you could see
the pattern of her, her clothes and everything we'd been
(28:09):
put down. While then the next day they kept most
of them following in a different direction, and the man
that had tracked that night. It's like, yeah, well they
didn't go took the baby. And they even knew which didn'
(28:33):
goo it was because it was it was not a local,
didn't go. It had one that had come in that
morning for the first time they'd ever seen it. It
was dip, much bigger than the ones they had around,
and so they recognized its footprint straight away. But the
(28:59):
ranger and please, like, no, no, you've got to follow there.
So they followed all sorts of tracks, and they kept saying, yeah,
but that's not right, dingo, right, didn't go go that way? Ah.
And with all the confusion at court, there was a
(29:23):
whole lot of fuss about this dingo called ding Oh
ding Wow, which people still ask about now. That was
a nickname one of the rangers had given to this
dingo that was over friendly with people, right, And it
(29:45):
attacked a little girl while the family was putting up
their campsite. She was about three at time and playing
in the driver's seat of the car, and it jumped
in and dragged her out of the car and she
(30:06):
started screaming and her father chased it, so I dropped
her and let her go. But when it was reported
that ding go was immediately put down.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
But then there were people who thought they knew what
they were doing but didn't, who kept saying, what was
it ding? Was it ding? And they harassed people so
much that in the end there was so much noise
about ding and so much harassing of the Aboriginals that
(30:53):
they came to believe that ding was what white people
call all dingoes.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Ah. Okay.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
So by the time this was eventually straightened out in
the Royal Commission, I said to my lawyer, you go
and see if mister Porter's picked up the fact that
Nipper is talking about two different dingos and he keeps
saying things that the wrong one, right, you know, that's
(31:27):
the wrong one, and of course they will have picked
it up. I said, we'll just ask if we've done
this before and discovered later something that seemed so simple
hadn't been picked up. So this is after hours. He
went across and asked him. He came back and said, well,
just as well, he made me go. He hadn't picked
it up. But he's halfway through the evidence with Nipper.
(31:51):
He's going to watch for it. And Nippers said in
the morning he actually caught him saying again that wrong
one and he said, hang on, you said wrong one.
Is there more than one Dingo? Nipper immediately said yes.
(32:13):
And then they got into the discussion about ding and
he said to him, so why did you say ding? Well,
white man does ah And he said, what do you say, well,
Calpanya or Dingo? And that's like, oh, big missed direction. Yes,
(32:39):
d Ding was dead.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
They see Ding, Yes, so it wasn't ding. They just
thought Ding was sought for Dingo in what well.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Probably they didn't to start off with, but they got
asked by the media so many times and by the prosecution,
you know ding, miss Ding that how Linda.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Did it turn? So it's so you know, it was
like I remember, I remember, it's so distinctively in my house,
you know where I grew up in Adelaide when it happened.
I was only eight at the time, but very distinctively,
never for a second did my mom she was you
know mom or four kids, did one not even a
(33:24):
glimpse of doubt in my mom's mind where we all
discuss it, and you know, never ever thought anything different
than it didn't go because we used to come to
Queensland as a family, because family were right here and
we'd go to Fraser Island, so we knew what you know,
dingoes were like so our family was so this is terrible,
(33:47):
this is like, how did it turn so incredibly too
potential murder? Saying there was blood in your car and
I remember all of it distinctively, and scissors and this,
and how did it like that suddenly to you, Oh
it's murder? Was it the media? Was it the police?
(34:07):
How did it turn from being obviously a dingo which
seemed very very obvious. Two a big conspiracy.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
I believe it was pure ambition by a very small
handful of people, and also people wanting.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
To cover their skin really, because.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
I mean even today people, you know, there's so many
things that come out at the Royal Commission. The news
just picks a couple of highlights, right, yeah, and people
think they know everything about the case. But you're getting
two or three minutes in the news, yes, to cover
(35:05):
five and a half hours of court.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
So there's lots of things that happen and are said
that the public never gets to hear. For instance, the
end he was saying, oh, this has never happened before yet.
The father of one of the attorney generals had personally shot.
(35:37):
I didn't go that killed an Aboriginal child.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Oh, there you go.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Bill had the entrails around its mouth. And in the
end came to court and said, my son is lying
when he says that because he knows this perfectly well.
He's grown up with me telling him the story. Funnily enough,
that page was missing out of our transcript when it
(36:04):
was sent to us, and you look at it and go,
did somebody not want us to have a permanent record
of that? And most people came in and out of
the news so quick that most people didn't even see it.
And dingos have killed hundreds of Aboriginals, but it was
(36:28):
in the day when you did not have to report
Aboriginal deaths. A shameful is to Australia. They weren't considered
people till a very few years before this happened.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Wow, and.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
You know that's one mess. Another thing that people don't
realize with this supposed decapitating it with scissors or whatever. Yes,
when they got this scissors out of our car and
went to test them, they fell in half started.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
The broken scissors.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Yeah, no, they weren't broken scissors, not at the time.
They did that, but they literally fell half when they
went to test them. Secondly, they had a two and
a half sent to me to blade. They were nail scissors.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Nle scissors.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
Yeah, now it had a job chopping your wrist off
with that.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
It's terrible.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
So there were silly things that were put out there
that they knew they couldn't prove to show them up.
But there were six people on the National Parks and
Wildlife Committee organizing body whatever. Yeah, so if you remember
(38:02):
any names, two of them are going to jump out
to you, and one is Paul Everingham, Yes, chief Minister
for the NT, who everybody in the NT at that
time knew he really wanted to be Prime Minister of Australia.
But as you know, you've got to be known by
a lot of people before you get voted into a
(38:26):
position like that. He did make it to Parliament, but
his term was very short. Another very well known name
on that committee was Ian Barker. Ian Barker was head
(38:54):
of the prosecution right the way through a landmark case
just before Azaria was taken a judge in the Northern
Territory said the owners of dingoes were responsible for attacks. Now,
(39:16):
being on that committee they were therefore responsible as the
representing body for any dingo attacks in the national park.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Oh gosh.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
So the Chief Minister at the time was also the
Minister for the Police and for National Parks and Wildlife.
And so when you start to investigate a little deeper,
you start saying, well, some of these men should not
have been in the middle of it. They should have
(39:54):
been excluded, but they never were.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
So and so it makes you wonder why. And yes,
you have to be careful what you're saying, because the
truth is not a defense libel in Australia. So how
did they know that are still alive?
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Very prickly, Yeah, yeah they would.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
And when it turned to the point where yourself and
Michael were charged, how do you how did you even
fathom that? When you knew.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
You don't fathom it. You wonder what's wrong with.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
What's what's gone wrong?
Speaker 3 (40:45):
But to be there's one other thing that I should
have mentioned. The initial cops. Yeah, and the ones that
came out from Alice Springs were good in their jobs,
particularly the ones from Alice Springs with the initial interview,
(41:10):
very very straight down the line, did their jobs, made
their recommendations, but somebody higher up than them did not
wanted to go down the way it was going as
the Dingo attack. And when you have a sergeant walk
(41:40):
into an inspector's office and tell the inspector this is
my office now I'm taking over the case, one wonders
why it was done that way instead of the inspector
being told to before hand. It's very unusual for a
(42:02):
junior to tell the senior things like that. And then
the police put started getting really screwed up, and it
went on and there. So there were commit careers made,
(42:23):
careers broken simply because people were trying to tell the
truth or pro Chamberlain as they used to call it,
or anti Chamberlain. Because of the first coroner's verdict, he
(42:49):
was blacklisted. He was due to be promoted, and after
that he was never promoted and he was squeezed out.
You look at it and go, hell, what's going on here? Yeah,
And when they quashed his finding, he was told to
(43:11):
have a legal representative there, but he could not go,
and his legal representative wasn't even allowed to tell him
any reasons of why they were quashing it. And they're
having a new inquest now, isn't that weird when the
judge is not allowed to know why they're overturning his
verdict exactly what. There was a lot of behind the
(43:37):
scenes politicking and I guess they thought we were an
easy mark to shut up and I didn't shut up. Good.
So at least we have a lot of new laws.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
In Australia now that it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
If if this hadn't happened, I wouldn't rather have got
them a different way. But that's that's why I've been
campaigning whenever I can now or a change to the
jury system.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Absolutely yeah, because I mean, I'm sure a lot of
juries in Australia. It would be tough. They would be
listening to so called forensic evidence. I've already had someone
else on my podcast that a few seasons about back
Lindy that went to jail for twenty one years for
a crime that never happened. And you know, the criminal
(44:36):
pathologist wasn't even a pathologist in South Australia, like he
was a charlatan. You know, all these things that happen.
It's amazing that.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
You were, like the dentist in Okay, right.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
The same happened to you.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
There you go, But see the big thing these days
it is even if you are a scientist, you you
were certainly have a mind that is able to discern
a lot of things a lot better. But scientific evidence
(45:10):
has become so technical and is becoming more and more
technical that if you don't have literally peers at the
evidence to understand that it's been what's been given, the
layman hasn't got the chances for having got a clue. Because,
(45:30):
I mean, we had Professor Octalony over from Sweden saying
I invented the test. Obviously, it's named the Octalony test
after Professor Octalony saying the test was not done the
(45:51):
right way. She did it wrong. You cannot prove what
she's saying. You can prove from the test. The jury
didn't believe him his test. How what better expert can
you have than that? But they liked the look of
her in the way she smiled at them and treated
(46:14):
them like kindergarten kids being explained big words too. Then
they cut out what the newspaper, what the local newspaper
said the next morning because they couldn't understand any of it,
and said, well, she must be right, But anybody with
(46:34):
an ounce of knowledge could look at it and go
hang on if he says they're not right, you know,
leading him to the test. So my thoughts these days
are that there should be a rolling panel of experts,
(46:57):
ones who are prepared, and there's a lot of people
do research and stuff all over the world. If they
want to volunteer to be on a panel. If you're
a cobweb expert, register and if something about cobwebs come up,
(47:21):
then the person presenting them presents their paper and their
slides to that panel who all write up their answers
and thoughts on it and then send it back and
only the agreed points then go before a jury. So
if you're a blood expert, only the agreed that is
(47:46):
definitely a correct answer, that's correct, that's a maybe, that's
not that's only the agreed points go to a jury.
So a jury is not trying to make a decision
on something they have.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Scientific evidence that they've got no idea about yet.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
Yeah, it's not was it? Was it a sword? Was
it a kitchen knife? Was it an axe? Whatever? Yes,
if it comes back this is definitely a paper opener,
letter opener, then that is the only thing this person
(48:25):
was stabbed by a letter opener. But there's a lady
that works in cut marks, and she was talking about
a prebias of things, and because we were talking about
the clothes and how you know this is not an
animal attack, therefore look for something else. And she said,
(48:49):
if somebody comes to me and says this is a
stabbing victim, that is actually gives you a mental bias.
They need to say, here's holes, work out what caused them,
and then you work out where the are peace have
(49:12):
rebarm wents threw them accidentally in an accident, or whether
somebody threw it at them for instance. You get real answers,
and we need a lot more work in that. And
you know there are no perfect answers, and we are
all human and we all have our own backgrounds, but
(49:36):
we need a better system than the one we've had.
Since Australia began prison guards to go with you prisoner transport.
They offered to pay them as well, and all their
accommodation and my accommodation.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
That's the end of part one. Within the Chamberlain just
such an incredible story, how she was telling us all
about Azaria and seeing that didn't go take her from
the tent in part two next week. I hope you
enjoy it. We'll talk about what happened with Lindy and
(50:16):
how she was convicted for the murder of Azaria. Hope
you tune in next week. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
Well the thanks for listening to Pure Grip with Paul McGrath.
Now the web guy's been a very busy boy. You
can now visit the website pure Grit dot com dot au,
search Pure Group podcast on Facebook and Instagram for the
fun behind the scenes stuff. And I was wondering why
Paul had started wearing makeup. Turns out all the chats
are now on YouTube as well, so make sure you
give that a subscribe
Welcome to Pure Grit with Paula McGrath. If you search
the word grit, you'd see that it means to have courage,
show strength of character, passion, and perseverance. Throughout the series,
paul chat to guests from all walks of life who
have shown pure grit to get to where they are now.
(00:24):
Paula Paula, yeah, look, he looks fine. I've done the intro,
so ready for you to talk now? Yeah, you do
your talking things.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome to a brand new season of Pure Grit, and
I'm starting the season off with a guest who has
been actually in my vision from the day I conceive
Pure Grit as an idea as a podcast. This guest
stirred huge emotions and passion for justice within myself from
the young age of eight years of age. Which's weld
famous but really for all the wrong reasons. Famous for
(00:54):
being Australia's most shameful miscarriage of justice for the wrong
ful conviction and murder of a nine week old beautiful baby,
Azariah her words, A Dingo's got my baby will never
actually leave us, but sadly divided our nation in nineteen eighty.
She's endured three long years in Darwin's prison. She was
sentenced to jail while she was actually pregnant with her
fourth child. She's a mom, a wife, a grandmother, and author,
(01:18):
the most resilient, courageous woman who I admire so much.
Please welcome Lindy Chamberlain creaton to Pure Grit. Hi Lindy,
Hi Paula. How are you doing.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I'm not doing too bad.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
You're not doing too badly. I have actually wanted you. Basically,
I wanted you as my first guest ever on Pure Grit,
but for some reason I couldn't find you.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
And I've found you. Found you website that tells you,
I know, to get to be you.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Actually, you have a fantastic website. Actually I really like
it a lot. I've been. I had a really good
look through your website. It's and then I got ahold
of Wreck, your lovely husband, and then I found you,
so it's easy.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
The website was self preservation for Wreck because we got
so many requests for the same thing. He decided to
do his research, said he knew a lot about it,
but he certainly wasn't around at the time, and to
(02:33):
create the website so that answers were there and Funnily enough,
despite that, I know a lot of teachers do their
school assignments on it, and then their students send me
an email and say, I just had a few questions
(02:55):
to ask you. Could you ask me this? And it's
obvious that they copy and pasted their assignment and are
too lazy to read the website. So those ones just
don't get answers.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
They so Ricked did the website for you?
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Rick did all the website. I haven't even read some
of it, So there you go.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
So, Lindy, where'd you grow up?
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Uh? Well, which year?
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Well? From childhood like schooling, early schooling.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
I was born in New zealand learned to talk over there,
hence the mixed accent, which still has some keyboard unit,
a little bit of Kiwi.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah yes, yet not so soll.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Hi. I still say certain words the Kwie way because
my mum was a Kiwi, but my dad was Victorian,
and we came back to Victoria when I was about
eighteen months old, and then we promptly lived in a
(04:14):
lot of places because my dad was a Seventh Day
and his pastor and all Pea cases were known as
pastor's kids. If your father was any sort of clergyman
(04:35):
eure Ape p K. He came, Yeah, a pastor's kid,
and you transfer a lot. So as a kid, the
longest I had ever lived anywhere was four years in
Saleh in Victoria. The shortest I it was four months
(05:03):
in mill Dura.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
But basically I lived all over Victoria until I was
twenty one or twenty actually, when my dad got transferred
to Broken Hill. And then at twenty one I got
married and we moved to Tasmania, and from Tasmania moved
(05:33):
to Queensland. So Aiden was born in Tasmania. Reagan was
born in Queensland, Azaria was born in Queensland but pretty
close to the NT border, and then Parlia was born
(05:55):
in the NT. So I had one Tazzy devil to
banana benders and Darwinian.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Oh wow, so that's you didn't really move around. So
obviously you met Michael through the church. Is that how
you two met?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Actually going on a trip with my parents and dropped
in to see my boyfriend who was at Avondale University
and he introduced me to Michael because they were actually roommates.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Oh wow, Okay, there you go. You had a boyfriend
and then your mate found a new boyfriend.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Yeah, but it was eighteen months or so after I
first met him, before I started dating him, and I
had broken off with the my previous boyfriend by then.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Oh wow, So that's so that's the story of where
you So you would have moved around a lot of
schooling different schoo or your home.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Sees because of the four years in Sale, I didn't
have so many primary schools and then went to Sale
and Warningville. Okay, yeah, but high school was a different matter.
I went to Girls Secondary School in Ballarat, girls High
(07:25):
in Brunsqueak. Wow the state I had five high schools.
So yeah, that's seven, eight nine was Horsham High, part
(07:47):
of part of ten was Horsham High. And then after
a rat Wow, and I had at eighteen months in
Ararat and then off to Ballaratte. Not BALLARATTE. Oh, I
(08:21):
was just down from Wangaratta in Victoria.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Was that that was that? When you finished school?
Speaker 3 (08:28):
My goodness, I've done a blank Banilla Banilla. So yeah,
I did year twelve in Banilla.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
So was that hard to forge friendships with all that
moving around?
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Well? I guess it must have been because despite my
noteieting being easy to find I have only once ever
been asked to a school reunion.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Where was that?
Speaker 3 (08:59):
That was the error rat one. Somebody wrote to me
and said their brother had been in my class. Didn't
say who the brother was, and they were married, so
I had no idea who it was. Probably is. The
letter did not get to me for about three years
(09:21):
after the reunion happened, and I did try replying and say, okay,
so who's your brother? But I never had any reply
from that, so I figured that, yeah, nobody remembers me
(09:44):
much from school. I was fairly quiet because I was
always the new kid.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, you would have been, yeah, do you have any
brothers or sisters?
Speaker 3 (09:53):
I have an older brother, but he's start and half
years older than me, so it was like had you know,
two single kids. There was no one around when he
was little, and and then pretty much by the time
I get old enough to appreciate him, he was then
(10:14):
after boarding school.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
So oh so he went to boarding for all right,
So I didn't have him around. No Ah, So what
so you were just going for obviously you and Michael
are taking the kids just for a holiday to Ularu
back in nineteen eighty just a family too, because you
(10:36):
were living not far from the border.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yes, well, Michael wanted to go to Dama because he
wanted to do photography. Yes, and having visited isrock before.
In fact, I had my name feeling near at the
front of the first book that was ever put on
top of a rock.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Wow. And in those you were climbing the rock then obviously.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Yeah, my parents and I and a friend of my
father's or climbed. There was no chain in those days,
so it was an interesting climb. We went right across
the rock to the other end, and they'd had a
ten year drought and there was dried, cracked mud in
(11:37):
places where that obviously been water catchment spots on the
top of the rock, and poking around in them we
found live fish. As soon as you unburied them, they
flopped about and it's like, oh quick, put them back
in there, thing and put them back in there. Presumably
(11:57):
they lived, but I've read since when the when the
water comes and they have of a pilder swimming up
they come again.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Now that's incredible.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
It's a thing with the rock, very fascinating. And it
was those bars around there. At the time we sat
on the top, we'd taken our lunch up with us
and sat on the top and in a one hundred
and eighty degree do you get from certain spots? We
(12:33):
were able to count the few she oaks and salt
pushes that had survived absolutely nothing like what is there
now and the big panicle. You know, this is natural.
You can't touch it. Nature has other ideas that comes
(12:55):
and goes.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Yes, Well, I actually thought of you. I didn't go
to as rocket or the hotel probably very early two thousands,
Probably maybe two thousand and two or something like that
was my first visit there, and that was when you
could still actually climb the rock, but you were asked
(13:18):
not to, so I actually chose not to and just
did the walk around the rock. But I thought of
you as soon as I went there. I just thought
of you, Lindy. I just I found it's so beautiful
and so spiritual in the middle of our country. Like
I really I did think of you though. I just
(13:39):
felt like it was just such a magical place. So
I know why you were there and camping there, and.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
It's just beautiful. It's just it's beautiful country. Well it
was sven more magical when you were the only ones there. Yeah,
there was no one else inside. And I remember one
night we pulled off the road to camp which I
had tired pull over. We had to just straight onto
(14:09):
the Ghibba plane and We're like, of all the people,
we've only met one car today, and why on earth
did we have to camp so close? Because we could
literally hear what they were saying around the campfire, but
we couldn't even see the glow of the campfire. And
(14:32):
we got up the next morning and continued traveling and
we expected to see them just over the next stand hill.
It was about two and a half miles before we
found their camping and they were still there talking and
it was just, you know, obviously the angle, the way
(14:55):
the wind was going, and the silence is just phenomenal.
But there isn't that sense there anymore. It's gone with
all the people that the tourists. That feeling is gone,
but I'll never forget it. And so when Michael said
(15:16):
he wanted to go up and he wanted to take
some pictures in Darwin, I'm like, where after pictures, we
have got to go to the rock first, and you
come out free ways that you go north or south.
We've got time. Let's go to there, go south to
the first eight days and then go north for the rest.
(15:42):
And well we did the first half of the trip
and that was it.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
So you didn't know anybody that was their camping at
the time.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
You just know.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
No, there was no friends with you or anything. It
was just your family. No just and then were you
different story. Now they're all like family. Keep in touch
with me and keep in touch with one another, and
people that were there at the actual time in nineteen
(16:14):
eighty that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Fact. Just a couple of weeks ago we had reck
and I had lunch with Wally and Margo Goodwin caught
up with them for the day because they're bits of
well in the Marinica you call them snowbirds because they
(16:37):
flee from the snowy countries and go to Florida. Here
that's just grain omads. However, me and Margo, we were
escaping from Melbourne winter and they come up to within
a half an hour from where we live, stop along
(16:58):
the sunny coast for a number of weeks and travel around.
So over year we get to catch up with them
at least once and then of course in Victoria when
we go down there.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
But that so they become you know, lifelong friends from
being there at the time that Zaria was taken.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
And everyone else we contact by phone or that's the road,
send one another messages or something. Talk at least once
a year.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
So when when Zaria was taken from the tent in
nineteen eighty but they didn't go, was it Reagan that
was in the tent as well asleep?
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (17:47):
And didn't he didn't he feel like a puppy on
his back or something as well?
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Well, he did, but we didn't realize he had for
several years.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Ah Okay, he.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
During all the kfuffle of the trial, he uninquests, etc.
He stayed at a mate's place a number of times,
and one night when he's there, he had a nightmare,
which he apparently had quite often, but he woke up
(18:33):
screaming and told them he could feel it. Didn't go
walking on him again, and they didn't want to worry us.
Their son was the same age, they confidered him, etcetera.
And when it came to the Royal Commission, we knew
(18:58):
by then that he had been awake and we tried
to find this person because they said, look, you know,
four years old, they can get suggestions in their memory. Whatever,
you need to have someone that corroborates this memory right
(19:23):
from very early on. So then we asked everybody we
could think of, all his friend's moms, and I couldn't
remember who told us, and we just couldn't find them.
(19:46):
So although they wanted him in the witness box, they said, well,
we can't because we can't get that other one, whereas
eight and at six is old enough definitely have his
own memories. And it wasn't until a couple of years
(20:10):
after Reck and I were married, and I was chatting
with friends in America who had also moved over there.
They were in LA and we'd gone down and was
staying with them and chatting about various things. And my
(20:32):
friend said to me, Aiden gave evidence. Why didn't they
have Reagan with the didnto you know walking on him? There?
Isn't that more relevant than Aiden? And I said yes,
But we could never find anyone to corroborate the testimony.
I tried everybody I could think of, because I know
(20:53):
somebody was with him, and she looked at me and said, oh, Lindy,
that was me. No, she said, being over here, nobody
ever told us that you were looking for her what
he knew, so never said anything. And it's like, oh, well,
(21:16):
because they'd moved, I didn't. I didn't think of them.
I was still thinking of all his local mates. But
young lighton and got overseas, so out of sight, out
of mind. But we know now. But the first time
he evera mentioned it to us was not long after
(21:39):
Reck and I were married and we got a puppy
and ah, he was a Australian shepherd, bought a Collie
crossed with a Saint Bernard couldn'ts went across. So as
(22:04):
a puppy he was like the size of a large poodle,
a four months big. Yeah. And Reagan was lying on
the floor and the puppy walked over his back and
he shot upwards, tipping the puppy off, scared it and
(22:28):
he sort of shivered and said, oh no, that felt
like they didn't go walking across me again.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
So he really does remember it.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
And we were like God smacked both reackain, I like
you remember that still? Oh yeah, oh wow, and he
occasionally still has nightmass ah. Okay. Then as an adults,
I was able to say to him, well, when I
(22:58):
came in the tent, why didn't you answer me? And well,
at first I thought you were it come back to
get me, and so I decided to pretend like I
was dead, And it wasn't until you kicked me really hard,
which you know, I was scrambling through the blankets at
(23:20):
that stage, and when he answered, I nudged him gently
with my foot and no reply. So I gave him
a lot of hard at one and he sort of
m and then I realized, no, he's all right, So
I left him. But he didn't talk to anyone or
anything then for about another hour, and then they said,
(23:43):
you think he's sleeping, but he's actually awake in the tent.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Right, So when that panic hit that as I was gone.
Wasn't there also like ooriginal trackers that found footprints and
found drag marks and why you know, which that's what
they're incredible. They know the land and they know diding
(24:08):
goes and they know foot printce how was that all not?
Was it the police that were discounting the.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Original funny scrambling permanent questions? That one wonders because I
don't know whether it was deliberate misconceptions or just bumbling
(24:37):
the cop on the night. Had you know. Mainly it
was drunk tourists or camping fine or something or rather,
and he was barely thirty. He did a good job,
but because he knew he didn't know what he was doing,
(25:00):
relied heavily on the head ranger, Derek Roth, who was
an x South African police inspector or something. He had
a fairly high rank and he was used to dealing
with animal attacks in South Africa, right, big bigger animals
(25:24):
were talking lions and byenas and what have you. And
he called him over and the rangers immediately found tracks
around the tent. They went the when I called, I
(25:49):
had seen it didn't going into the sandhills, and everybody
went that direction. Well when Roth came over, and he
was the only want to look in the tent that
night to get the actual you know, it's like you
need to look in the tent. You need to look
(26:10):
at the tent, And eventually the cop did because he
kept asking me questions. But I thought the ranger was
also a cop because the uniforms are the same color,
the details the different. In the dark. Because the cop
was deferring to this guy, I thought he was his scenior.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
He wasn't.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
They were all like, yeah, everybody knows what's happened. We
don't have to preserve the scene, we don't have to
do anything later, it was like, why did you mess
it up? Why did you this? Why did you that?
While we're hiding. However, everybody there at the night knew
it was a dingo, yes, and one of the rangers.
(27:04):
I don't know whether one of the rangers went with
them or not, but there was a senior scout master
who was very used to tracking from his scouting. He
went with a group of Aboriginals and some others who
followed the footprints of not where I said the dinger
(27:26):
had gone, but the ones tent, and they realized there
were drag marks and what could have either been salive
or blood. They were talking in their own language. The
scout master, who happened at the time to be the
(27:49):
head master of a school in Victoria, so no idiot no,
was with them, and they found the place where they
said it had been put down, and you could see
the pattern of her, her clothes and everything we'd been
(28:09):
put down. While then the next day they kept most
of them following in a different direction, and the man
that had tracked that night. It's like, yeah, well they
didn't go took the baby. And they even knew which didn'
(28:33):
goo it was because it was it was not a local,
didn't go. It had one that had come in that
morning for the first time they'd ever seen it. It
was dip, much bigger than the ones they had around,
and so they recognized its footprint straight away. But the
(28:59):
ranger and please, like, no, no, you've got to follow there.
So they followed all sorts of tracks, and they kept saying, yeah,
but that's not right, dingo, right, didn't go go that way? Ah.
And with all the confusion at court, there was a
(29:23):
whole lot of fuss about this dingo called ding Oh
ding Wow, which people still ask about now. That was
a nickname one of the rangers had given to this
dingo that was over friendly with people, right, And it
(29:45):
attacked a little girl while the family was putting up
their campsite. She was about three at time and playing
in the driver's seat of the car, and it jumped
in and dragged her out of the car and she
(30:06):
started screaming and her father chased it, so I dropped
her and let her go. But when it was reported
that ding go was immediately put down.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
But then there were people who thought they knew what
they were doing but didn't, who kept saying, what was
it ding? Was it ding? And they harassed people so
much that in the end there was so much noise
about ding and so much harassing of the Aboriginals that
(30:53):
they came to believe that ding was what white people
call all dingoes.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Ah. Okay.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
So by the time this was eventually straightened out in
the Royal Commission, I said to my lawyer, you go
and see if mister Porter's picked up the fact that
Nipper is talking about two different dingos and he keeps
saying things that the wrong one, right, you know, that's
(31:27):
the wrong one, and of course they will have picked
it up. I said, we'll just ask if we've done
this before and discovered later something that seemed so simple
hadn't been picked up. So this is after hours. He
went across and asked him. He came back and said, well,
just as well, he made me go. He hadn't picked
it up. But he's halfway through the evidence with Nipper.
(31:51):
He's going to watch for it. And Nippers said in
the morning he actually caught him saying again that wrong
one and he said, hang on, you said wrong one.
Is there more than one Dingo? Nipper immediately said yes.
(32:13):
And then they got into the discussion about ding and
he said to him, so why did you say ding? Well,
white man does ah And he said, what do you say, well,
Calpanya or Dingo? And that's like, oh, big missed direction. Yes,
(32:39):
d Ding was dead.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
They see Ding, Yes, so it wasn't ding. They just
thought Ding was sought for Dingo in what well.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Probably they didn't to start off with, but they got
asked by the media so many times and by the prosecution,
you know ding, miss Ding that how Linda.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Did it turn? So it's so you know, it was
like I remember, I remember, it's so distinctively in my house,
you know where I grew up in Adelaide when it happened.
I was only eight at the time, but very distinctively,
never for a second did my mom she was you
know mom or four kids, did one not even a
(33:24):
glimpse of doubt in my mom's mind where we all
discuss it, and you know, never ever thought anything different
than it didn't go because we used to come to
Queensland as a family, because family were right here and
we'd go to Fraser Island, so we knew what you know,
dingoes were like so our family was so this is terrible,
(33:47):
this is like, how did it turn so incredibly too
potential murder? Saying there was blood in your car and
I remember all of it distinctively, and scissors and this,
and how did it like that suddenly to you, Oh
it's murder? Was it the media? Was it the police?
(34:07):
How did it turn from being obviously a dingo which
seemed very very obvious. Two a big conspiracy.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
I believe it was pure ambition by a very small
handful of people, and also people wanting.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
To cover their skin really, because.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
I mean even today people, you know, there's so many
things that come out at the Royal Commission. The news
just picks a couple of highlights, right, yeah, and people
think they know everything about the case. But you're getting
two or three minutes in the news, yes, to cover
(35:05):
five and a half hours of court.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
So there's lots of things that happen and are said
that the public never gets to hear. For instance, the
end he was saying, oh, this has never happened before yet.
The father of one of the attorney generals had personally shot.
(35:37):
I didn't go that killed an Aboriginal child.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Oh, there you go.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Bill had the entrails around its mouth. And in the
end came to court and said, my son is lying
when he says that because he knows this perfectly well.
He's grown up with me telling him the story. Funnily enough,
that page was missing out of our transcript when it
(36:04):
was sent to us, and you look at it and go,
did somebody not want us to have a permanent record
of that? And most people came in and out of
the news so quick that most people didn't even see it.
And dingos have killed hundreds of Aboriginals, but it was
(36:28):
in the day when you did not have to report
Aboriginal deaths. A shameful is to Australia. They weren't considered
people till a very few years before this happened.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Wow, and.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
You know that's one mess. Another thing that people don't
realize with this supposed decapitating it with scissors or whatever. Yes,
when they got this scissors out of our car and
went to test them, they fell in half started.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
The broken scissors.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Yeah, no, they weren't broken scissors, not at the time.
They did that, but they literally fell half when they
went to test them. Secondly, they had a two and
a half sent to me to blade. They were nail scissors.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Nle scissors.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
Yeah, now it had a job chopping your wrist off
with that.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
It's terrible.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
So there were silly things that were put out there
that they knew they couldn't prove to show them up.
But there were six people on the National Parks and
Wildlife Committee organizing body whatever. Yeah, so if you remember
(38:02):
any names, two of them are going to jump out
to you, and one is Paul Everingham, Yes, chief Minister
for the NT, who everybody in the NT at that
time knew he really wanted to be Prime Minister of Australia.
But as you know, you've got to be known by
a lot of people before you get voted into a
(38:26):
position like that. He did make it to Parliament, but
his term was very short. Another very well known name
on that committee was Ian Barker. Ian Barker was head
(38:54):
of the prosecution right the way through a landmark case
just before Azaria was taken a judge in the Northern
Territory said the owners of dingoes were responsible for attacks. Now,
(39:16):
being on that committee they were therefore responsible as the
representing body for any dingo attacks in the national park.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Oh gosh.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
So the Chief Minister at the time was also the
Minister for the Police and for National Parks and Wildlife.
And so when you start to investigate a little deeper,
you start saying, well, some of these men should not
have been in the middle of it. They should have
(39:54):
been excluded, but they never were.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
So and so it makes you wonder why. And yes,
you have to be careful what you're saying, because the
truth is not a defense libel in Australia. So how
did they know that are still alive?
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Very prickly, Yeah, yeah they would.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
And when it turned to the point where yourself and
Michael were charged, how do you how did you even
fathom that? When you knew.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
You don't fathom it. You wonder what's wrong with.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
What's what's gone wrong?
Speaker 3 (40:45):
But to be there's one other thing that I should
have mentioned. The initial cops. Yeah, and the ones that
came out from Alice Springs were good in their jobs,
particularly the ones from Alice Springs with the initial interview,
(41:10):
very very straight down the line, did their jobs, made
their recommendations, but somebody higher up than them did not
wanted to go down the way it was going as
the Dingo attack. And when you have a sergeant walk
(41:40):
into an inspector's office and tell the inspector this is
my office now I'm taking over the case, one wonders
why it was done that way instead of the inspector
being told to before hand. It's very unusual for a
(42:02):
junior to tell the senior things like that. And then
the police put started getting really screwed up, and it
went on and there. So there were commit careers made,
(42:23):
careers broken simply because people were trying to tell the
truth or pro Chamberlain as they used to call it,
or anti Chamberlain. Because of the first coroner's verdict, he
(42:49):
was blacklisted. He was due to be promoted, and after
that he was never promoted and he was squeezed out.
You look at it and go, hell, what's going on here? Yeah,
And when they quashed his finding, he was told to
(43:11):
have a legal representative there, but he could not go,
and his legal representative wasn't even allowed to tell him
any reasons of why they were quashing it. And they're
having a new inquest now, isn't that weird when the
judge is not allowed to know why they're overturning his
verdict exactly what. There was a lot of behind the
(43:37):
scenes politicking and I guess they thought we were an
easy mark to shut up and I didn't shut up. Good.
So at least we have a lot of new laws.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
In Australia now that it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
If if this hadn't happened, I wouldn't rather have got
them a different way. But that's that's why I've been
campaigning whenever I can now or a change to the
jury system.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Absolutely yeah, because I mean, I'm sure a lot of
juries in Australia. It would be tough. They would be
listening to so called forensic evidence. I've already had someone
else on my podcast that a few seasons about back
Lindy that went to jail for twenty one years for
a crime that never happened. And you know, the criminal
(44:36):
pathologist wasn't even a pathologist in South Australia, like he
was a charlatan. You know, all these things that happen.
It's amazing that.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
You were, like the dentist in Okay, right.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
The same happened to you.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
There you go, But see the big thing these days
it is even if you are a scientist, you you
were certainly have a mind that is able to discern
a lot of things a lot better. But scientific evidence
(45:10):
has become so technical and is becoming more and more
technical that if you don't have literally peers at the
evidence to understand that it's been what's been given, the
layman hasn't got the chances for having got a clue. Because,
(45:30):
I mean, we had Professor Octalony over from Sweden saying
I invented the test. Obviously, it's named the Octalony test
after Professor Octalony saying the test was not done the
(45:51):
right way. She did it wrong. You cannot prove what
she's saying. You can prove from the test. The jury
didn't believe him his test. How what better expert can
you have than that? But they liked the look of
her in the way she smiled at them and treated
(46:14):
them like kindergarten kids being explained big words too. Then
they cut out what the newspaper, what the local newspaper
said the next morning because they couldn't understand any of it,
and said, well, she must be right, But anybody with
(46:34):
an ounce of knowledge could look at it and go
hang on if he says they're not right, you know,
leading him to the test. So my thoughts these days
are that there should be a rolling panel of experts,
(46:57):
ones who are prepared, and there's a lot of people
do research and stuff all over the world. If they
want to volunteer to be on a panel. If you're
a cobweb expert, register and if something about cobwebs come up,
(47:21):
then the person presenting them presents their paper and their
slides to that panel who all write up their answers
and thoughts on it and then send it back and
only the agreed points then go before a jury. So
if you're a blood expert, only the agreed that is
(47:46):
definitely a correct answer, that's correct, that's a maybe, that's
not that's only the agreed points go to a jury.
So a jury is not trying to make a decision
on something they have.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Scientific evidence that they've got no idea about yet.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
Yeah, it's not was it? Was it a sword? Was
it a kitchen knife? Was it an axe? Whatever? Yes,
if it comes back this is definitely a paper opener,
letter opener, then that is the only thing this person
(48:25):
was stabbed by a letter opener. But there's a lady
that works in cut marks, and she was talking about
a prebias of things, and because we were talking about
the clothes and how you know this is not an
animal attack, therefore look for something else. And she said,
(48:49):
if somebody comes to me and says this is a
stabbing victim, that is actually gives you a mental bias.
They need to say, here's holes, work out what caused them,
and then you work out where the are peace have
(49:12):
rebarm wents threw them accidentally in an accident, or whether
somebody threw it at them for instance. You get real answers,
and we need a lot more work in that. And
you know there are no perfect answers, and we are
all human and we all have our own backgrounds, but
(49:36):
we need a better system than the one we've had.
Since Australia began prison guards to go with you prisoner transport.
They offered to pay them as well, and all their
accommodation and my accommodation.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
That's the end of part one. Within the Chamberlain just
such an incredible story, how she was telling us all
about Azaria and seeing that didn't go take her from
the tent in part two next week. I hope you
enjoy it. We'll talk about what happened with Lindy and
(50:16):
how she was convicted for the murder of Azaria. Hope
you tune in next week. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
Well the thanks for listening to Pure Grip with Paul McGrath.
Now the web guy's been a very busy boy. You
can now visit the website pure Grit dot com dot au,
search Pure Group podcast on Facebook and Instagram for the
fun behind the scenes stuff. And I was wondering why
Paul had started wearing makeup. Turns out all the chats
are now on YouTube as well, so make sure you
give that a subscribe
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