The recent attack by a dingo on a 14month old boy sleeping in a camper trailer on Fraser Island, resulting in him being dragged outside and suffering a fractured skull and cuts to neck and head , was yet more confirmation that nine week old Azaria Chamberlain had been taken from the family tent by a dingo at Uluru in 1980, says Darwin agronomist Robert Wesley-Smith .
Wesley-Smith ,of the Northern Territory Civil Liberties Council , campaigned to clear Michael and Lindy Chamberlain . The victim of the latest Fraser Island attack , the third in recent times , was older , bigger and would have been much heavier than Azaria .
It had been claimed in the Chamberlain case that Lindy Chamberlain had cut the infant's throat in the front seat of the car and they had hidden the body. It was said dingoes could not open their jaws far enough to grab a child by the head . This , Wesley-Smith said, was nonsense as an Alice Springs group had shown the animal had the capacity to expand its jaw to grab large prey .
Over the years that the Chamberlain case dragged on before they were exonerated after four coronial inquiries of any involvement in the disappearance of the child and it declared she had been taken by a dingo , Wesley-Smith kept an extensive file, passed to Little Darwin , part of the many documents , letters and cuttings run below .
Wesley-Smith praised the recent ABC TV show Anh's Brush With Fame in which Lindy Chamberlain was painted while he interviewed her in his studio . Details of the tragic night in which her baby daughter was taken from the tent and the ordeal the entire family went through after the event were covered .
The fact Mrs Chamberlain had her baby daughter , Kahlia , taken away from her soon after she gave birth in Darwin Hospital , while she was serving a sentence for murder, shocked Wesley-Smith.
"I was informed that in prison she had acted like a mother to other women in there ," he added. Her incredible courage and fortitude had come through during the sitting.
Sensational claims were made in Northern Territory News"advertisements", by independent political candidate , Phil Ward. In one he said the Azaria murder investigation probably started as a police payback for a radio campaign Michael Chamberlain had run against marijuana when he was a Seventh -Day Adventist minister in Mount Isa . Ward alleged Mount Isa police were involved in the sale of the drug , two of them had flown to Territory and "convinced Territory police to change to a murder investigation ". He further alleged Darwin police were also involved in supplying illegal drugs.
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Short moment of relief ; NT government renewed attack.
During the campaign , Wesley-Smith wrote letters , spoke to members of the legal profession , urged Territory politician Bob Collins to become involved-he visited Lindy in prison . The Northern Territory News in September 1983 criticised Collins' call for a judicial inquiry into the Chamberlain case.
Wesley-Smith in June 1987 fired an angry letter into the editor of the paper over an editorial . He said another piece in the paper had tried to revive the untrue allegation that Azaria's jacket had been found neatly folded. The Chamberlain defence, he believed , had not handled the case as well as it could have. Unfortunately, the adversarial legal system did not seek the truth , but only judged on evidence available and put up for scrutiny .
"I don't expect mass sympathy for the Chamberlains, " he wrote in his letter ." Our dinkum Aussies don't like being shown up to be dingoes , and wrong " This part was deleted by the newspaper.
Also cut from the letter was the following paragraph which said these strong comments applied to the Northern Territory News , " whose never-failing bias against the Chamberlains (thus for the NT Government ), helped build the feeling and judgement against them. "
Miscellaneous items of interest from the file :
American supporters of the Chamberlains donated at least $80,000 for a retrial .
Six weeks before Azaria Chamberlain disappeared the three year old daughter of Max and Phyllis Cranwell was attacked by a dingo at Uluru ; left in a car while the family was setting up camp, she was heard cry , found on the ground with a dingo standing over her . Mr Cranwell and a daughter died in a plane crash in Papua New Guinea , August 2009.
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Sensational claims were made in Northern Territory News"advertisements", by independent political candidate , Phil Ward. In one he said the Azaria murder investigation probably started as a police payback for a radio campaign Michael Chamberlain had run against marijuana when he was a Seventh -Day Adventist minister in Mount Isa . Ward alleged Mount Isa police were involved in the sale of the drug , two of them had flown to Territory and "convinced Territory police to change to a murder investigation ". He further alleged Darwin police were also involved in supplying illegal drugs.
In another piece, Ward said he had spoken to Michael Chamberlain in NSW who confirmed Azaria had been given a big feed of S26 milk formula to make sure she had a long sleep the night of her death . Every mother knew, he wrote, that babies were likely to vomit after drinking S26. An Aboriginal Democrat candidate, Wiyendji Roberts, had told Ward a dingo would sense a sick baby .
Ward complained that the NT News had put "advertisement " over all his pieces , but had left it off seven CLP pieces so far. Also a Seventh-Day Adventist , Ward , who claimed he spent 18 months investigating the case at a cost of $125,000 , wrote What the Jury Were Not Told , self published . More later.
