Analysis: Fraser Island dingo attack final proof for Lindy Chamberlain doubters

And so, 39 years after Azaria was taken, another guilty dingo appears on Fraser Island and serves as the ultimate witness for the defence of Lindy Chamberlain.

Analysis: And so, 39 years after Azaria was taken, another guilty dingo appears on Fraser Island and serves as the ultimate witness for the defence of Lindy Chamberlain.

This must be final proof the last of the doubters need. Dingos will take children.

What is easy to forget when admiring their slender athleticism, their playfulness, their inquiring dispositions and their brimming intelligence is they are utterly wild.

They are also brazen, cheeky and especially lazy — which is why they like to dwell on the fringes of human activity, such as campsites, where opportunity can present.

The puncture marks left on a little boy dragged crying from his camper-trailer by two dingoes working in tandem leaves no question as to what happened.

LATEST: Boy snatched by dingoes on Fraser Island

An infant boy is recovering at Hervey Bay Hospital this morning, after he was attacked by a dingo at Fraser Island. Picture: RACQ LifeFlight Rescue

Unfortunately for Lindy, there was no body that could quickly settle the question in her favour.

A few days after baby Azaria went missing, a camper found the jumpsuit Azaria had been wearing. Though there was no such thing as DNA testing at the time, it was determined there was no dingo saliva on the jumpsuit and that it had likely been shredded by scissors.

The hatred for Lindy became unstoppable. She was charged with murder.

The defence argued there was no saliva because Azaria had been wearing a matinee jacket as she slept in the tent at the Ayers Rock (as Uluru was then known) campsite.

If Azaria was taken by dogs, her mother was thrown to them. The thrust of the Crown case was that the matinee jacket was a fiction invented by Lindy to explain away the absence of saliva. She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Lindy Chamberlain and Michael Chamberlain during their trial.

Lindy Chamberlain with artist Anh Do.

Then in 1986, when Lindy was three years into her sentence, a mentally unwell man from England climbed the rock, believing he was to be transported directly to heaven.

Instead, he slipped and fell to his death. His body was found by a dingo den and there, pummelled in the red earth next to him, was the matinee jacket.

Lindy was released and pardoned — though that did not satisfy her because it carried the implication she had been forgiven for a crime.

Eventually, in 2012, she would be exonerated in full by the Darwin coroner — and a spate of attacks on children on Fraser Island helped her reach the conclusion.

Ms Morris found “that after Mrs Chamberlain placed Azaria in the tent, a dingo or dingoes entered the tent, attacked Azaria and dragged or carried her from the area.”

Lindy forgave jurors who admitted they convicted her not on the evidence but on the cut of her jib, which they didn’t much fancy.

Lindy, now Chamberlain-Creighton, recently told artist Anh Do: “If I hadn’t gone through all that we wouldn’t have the laws that we’ve got in Australia right now, we’ve got independent forensic science now as a result of that trial.”

That’s big forgiveness from her. Now it’s time for the residual disbelievers to forgive themselves for being wrong about her.

Originally published as Analysis: Fraser Island dingo attack final proof for Lindy Chamberlain doubters