Astonishing Antipodean Antics

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Bad Doggie

In Dispute: Dingos eat babies. Australian courts say YES, NO, YES.

The original conviction of Lindy "A Dingo Took My Baby" Chamberlain has been set aside due to evidence of baby Azaria's torn and bloodstained jacket (tears consistent with dingo teeth) being found in the bush and the discovery that forensic evidence presented in the original trial was badly bungled and other evidence was flawed due to the bias of the police against the Chamberlains.

The case had been kept in the forefront of the public mind by a grassroots organisation that kept petitioning for the reopening of the case, led by the other holiday-makers at the camping ground, who continued to maintain that she could not possibly have had the time to murder Azaria as alleged by the Crown Prosecutor.

Mrs Chamberlain was convicted of murdering her baby daughter Azaria in a 1982 trial that followed a second inquest into Azaria's death. The original 1982 Coroner's inquest finding that a dingo had indeed taken the infant on August 17, 1980 was quashed. She was released from jail in 1986 following the discovery of Azaria's jacket near Ayer's Rock. A Royal Commission showed the unreliability of the forensic evidence presented during the trial that convicted her, and that the original jury would not have found her guilty if they had had all the evidence - her conviction was quashed. A third coroner's inquest returned an open finding on whether a dingo took the baby.

There are still some that claim that a human must have been involved somehow in the baby's death, and that dingoes would never eat a baby. However, there have been recent well reported incidents of semi-tamed dingoes on Fraser Island attacking a young children and even adult tourists in broad daylight - it seems probable that many dingoes in tourist areas have lost their fear of humans without gaining any particular affection for us, so that it is best to be wary.

References:

• Open verdict in Australia's dingo case
• Chamberlain case unlikely to be reopened
• _A Cry In The Night_ by Fiona Steele
• The Movie with Meryl Streep: "A Cry in the Dark" overseas, "Evil Angels" in Oz
• A Draft Dingo Management Strategy for Fraser Island
• Dingos are Dangerous (scroll down through this Fraser Island newsletter)