Online timelines supposedly setting out main developments in the Azaria Chamberlain case include misleading and garbled claims about the late NT Senator, Bob Collins , a Darwin reporter and the NT Government’s response . One states that on February 7, 1986 : Local reporter Frank Alcorta is incensed when he discovers the ( baby’s) matinee jacket has been held in secret for days . He threatens to publish an article if NT government does not release Lindy from jail or call a royal commission . It complies .
A variation , same date , reads : Senator Bob Collins forced local reporter Frank Alcorta to check his sources. He does, and is so infuriated he writes an article for the local paper and shows it to the NT Government, threatening to print it if Lindy is not released from jail by 12 noon, or an inquiry is called. They do both .
Unaware of such a dramatic sequence of events , I contacted former NT News journalist and onetime government speechwriter Alcorta , a Vietnam veteran, now living in Queensland , who covered momentous parts of the case, and asked if the thrust of these surprising summaries were correct, and if he could supply information about the part played by Senator Collins in his campaign to have Lindy Chamberlain released from prison . He responded thus :
I think that the first thing I ought to put on the record is that I never became incensed by some new revelation about the Chamberlain case brought to my attention by Bob Collins and I definitely did not "threaten" the NT Government with publication unless Lindy Chamberlain was released from jail immediately. It was not in my power to do so and I would never do so anyway.
Bob Collins was of course tireless in his efforts on Lindy´s behalf. While he had canvassed the issue repeatedly in private with a number of people, including myself , for some years, he really came out in public with calls for an inquiry into the case after a front page story was published by the NT News on September 17, 1985 questioning some aspects of the forensic science used to convict Lindy. The calls were rejected by the Government.
On September 26 the NT News revealed that German scientists had cast grave doubts on crucial aspects of the forensic evidence against Lindy. The next day Collins visited Lindy in the Berrimah Jail for the first time.
"She's a remarkable woman with an incredible degree of inner strength. I went to meet her because it was time for me to meet her. It was the right thing to do," Collins told the newspaper after the meeting.
One month later, on October 27, the Sunday Territorian published an impassioned plea by Lindy for an inquiry. She had granted an interview to the newspaper (my editor Gary Shipway and myself) after being persuaded to do so by Collins.
On November 12 the Attorney- General, Marshall Perron, tabled a 107 page report by the Solicitor General, Brian Martin, dismissing the "new" evidence in the case.
But the NT News, on Nov 14, announced on its front page that Lindy would be released within a few days. The announcement was dismissed by Perron after talks in Canberra with former Federal Attorneys General, Senators Gareth Evans and Peter Durack.
There the case rested for the rest of 1985 despite efforts to keep the controversy going by Collins and by Lindy´s then husband, Michael Chamberlain, who also crusaded tenaciously for her release.
In January 1986, the NT News and Sunday Territorian carried several reports indicating rising speculation about Lindy´s fate. The NT News published that the South Australian chief forensic scientist, Dr Andrew Scott, was about to blow the findings of the Territory Solicitor General, Brian Martin, apart. The Sunday Territorian obtained evidence that Scott would say Martin had been "selective in the presentation of his evidence" and described Martin´s interpretation of a report by German manufacturers, Beringwerke, on the blood reagent used in the Chamberlain case as "preposterous."
It looked as if events were shaping up yet again as a battle between forensic scientists and their various conflicting interpretations of evidence. And, in all probability, that is how the continuing Chamberlain saga would have developed but for a bizarre incident which quickly unravelled the case.
On February 3, the NT News carried a brief report about an English tourist who had accidentally fallen to his death at Ayers Rock. His body was found at the foot of the great monolith. It had been partly devoured by dingos and one of his hands had been eaten away.
The find sparked a grisly search for the missing parts of the body and, on the same day, police recovered a tiny, dirty, sand impregnated matinee jacket near the tourist´s dead body. The jacket belonged to Azaria Chamberlain.
Lindy´s lawyer, Stuart Tipple, flew to Ayers Rock where he gave a press conference attended by more than 40 media representatives from all over Australia. Tipple anticipated Lindy´s early release on the basis of new evidence and this in fact happened next day.
The immediate events leading to her freedom were every bit as gripping as those which led to her imprisonment and they were described in detail by the Sunday Territorian on February 9 (the newspaper in fact had been preparing a careful report of Scott´s analysis of forensic evidence which now, of course, became irrelevant.)
I am not going to go into the detail of various meetings between Police Commissioner, Peter McCauley, with Brian Martin and with Chief Minister Ian Tuxworth on February 7 because it is probably unimportant for your task.
Enough to say that just after 11:00 am that day a letter was written explaining the Government´s intentions to Bob Collins. At 12:45pm the Chief Minister actually took the unprecedented step to phone the NT News to alert the managing editor that Lindy was likely to be released that very same afternoon.
At 1:00 pm Cabinet met with the Administrator, Commodore Eric Johnstone, for an emergency Executive Council meeting to formalise Lindy´s release.
At 4.20pm, her meagre belongings in a suitcase, she left jail for good and spent the night with friends and well wishers in suburban Nightcliff. Significantly and understandably, the only outsider she agreed to see was Collins.
FOOTNOTE : Alcorta wrote a book , above, about the dramatic chain of events which at the time were just as sensational as the Azaria Chamberlain affair , if not more so – THE DARWIN REBELLION of 1911-1919. In this uprising unionists stormed Government House and forced the Administrator, Dr Gilruth, to secretly slip out of town aboard a naval gunboat . Also forced to quit town aboard ship were three members of the organisation set up to run the Territory after Gilruth’s ignominious departure ; closure of Vesteys meatworks followed soon after , a huge economic blow to the tiny town . In the preface to the book , Alcorta wrote that it had started as a doctoral thesis and almost ended as a novel as he discovered so much fascinating material. It is easy to see why it would have made an epic novel . In his book THE FRONT DOOR- Darwin 1869-1969, Douglas Lockwood described the events during the eight years that Dr Gilruth was in office as ones involving demonstrations against authority not seen since the armed rebellion at the Eureka Stockade 60 years earlier. NEXT : The Chamberlain Case archives.
On September 26 the NT News revealed that German scientists had cast grave doubts on crucial aspects of the forensic evidence against Lindy. The next day Collins visited Lindy in the Berrimah Jail for the first time.
"She's a remarkable woman with an incredible degree of inner strength. I went to meet her because it was time for me to meet her. It was the right thing to do," Collins told the newspaper after the meeting.
One month later, on October 27, the Sunday Territorian published an impassioned plea by Lindy for an inquiry. She had granted an interview to the newspaper (my editor Gary Shipway and myself) after being persuaded to do so by Collins.
On November 12 the Attorney- General, Marshall Perron, tabled a 107 page report by the Solicitor General, Brian Martin, dismissing the "new" evidence in the case.
But the NT News, on Nov 14, announced on its front page that Lindy would be released within a few days. The announcement was dismissed by Perron after talks in Canberra with former Federal Attorneys General, Senators Gareth Evans and Peter Durack.
There the case rested for the rest of 1985 despite efforts to keep the controversy going by Collins and by Lindy´s then husband, Michael Chamberlain, who also crusaded tenaciously for her release.
In January 1986, the NT News and Sunday Territorian carried several reports indicating rising speculation about Lindy´s fate. The NT News published that the South Australian chief forensic scientist, Dr Andrew Scott, was about to blow the findings of the Territory Solicitor General, Brian Martin, apart. The Sunday Territorian obtained evidence that Scott would say Martin had been "selective in the presentation of his evidence" and described Martin´s interpretation of a report by German manufacturers, Beringwerke, on the blood reagent used in the Chamberlain case as "preposterous."
It looked as if events were shaping up yet again as a battle between forensic scientists and their various conflicting interpretations of evidence. And, in all probability, that is how the continuing Chamberlain saga would have developed but for a bizarre incident which quickly unravelled the case.
On February 3, the NT News carried a brief report about an English tourist who had accidentally fallen to his death at Ayers Rock. His body was found at the foot of the great monolith. It had been partly devoured by dingos and one of his hands had been eaten away.
The find sparked a grisly search for the missing parts of the body and, on the same day, police recovered a tiny, dirty, sand impregnated matinee jacket near the tourist´s dead body. The jacket belonged to Azaria Chamberlain.
Lindy´s lawyer, Stuart Tipple, flew to Ayers Rock where he gave a press conference attended by more than 40 media representatives from all over Australia. Tipple anticipated Lindy´s early release on the basis of new evidence and this in fact happened next day.
The immediate events leading to her freedom were every bit as gripping as those which led to her imprisonment and they were described in detail by the Sunday Territorian on February 9 (the newspaper in fact had been preparing a careful report of Scott´s analysis of forensic evidence which now, of course, became irrelevant.)
I am not going to go into the detail of various meetings between Police Commissioner, Peter McCauley, with Brian Martin and with Chief Minister Ian Tuxworth on February 7 because it is probably unimportant for your task.
Enough to say that just after 11:00 am that day a letter was written explaining the Government´s intentions to Bob Collins. At 12:45pm the Chief Minister actually took the unprecedented step to phone the NT News to alert the managing editor that Lindy was likely to be released that very same afternoon.
At 1:00 pm Cabinet met with the Administrator, Commodore Eric Johnstone, for an emergency Executive Council meeting to formalise Lindy´s release.
At 4.20pm, her meagre belongings in a suitcase, she left jail for good and spent the night with friends and well wishers in suburban Nightcliff. Significantly and understandably, the only outsider she agreed to see was Collins.
FOOTNOTE : Alcorta wrote a book , above, about the dramatic chain of events which at the time were just as sensational as the Azaria Chamberlain affair , if not more so – THE DARWIN REBELLION of 1911-1919. In this uprising unionists stormed Government House and forced the Administrator, Dr Gilruth, to secretly slip out of town aboard a naval gunboat . Also forced to quit town aboard ship were three members of the organisation set up to run the Territory after Gilruth’s ignominious departure ; closure of Vesteys meatworks followed soon after , a huge economic blow to the tiny town . In the preface to the book , Alcorta wrote that it had started as a doctoral thesis and almost ended as a novel as he discovered so much fascinating material. It is easy to see why it would have made an epic novel . In his book THE FRONT DOOR- Darwin 1869-1969, Douglas Lockwood described the events during the eight years that Dr Gilruth was in office as ones involving demonstrations against authority not seen since the armed rebellion at the Eureka Stockade 60 years earlier. NEXT : The Chamberlain Case archives.
