Teary Lindy Chamberlain relives dingo moment on Anh Do's Brush with Fame

Lindy Chamberlain has revealed more about the tumultuous moment her baby daughter Azaria was taken by a dingo in a candid TV appearance that moved Brush with Fame host Anh Do to tears.

Lindy has revealed more about the tumultuous moment her baby daughter Azaria was taken by a dingo in a candid appearance that moved TV show host Anh Do to tears. 

In a rare, candid and at times teary interview with artist and comedian Anh Do, Lindy Chamberlain said prayer pulled her through the loss of her nine-week-old baby, the lengthy trial, jail and the decades afterwards without a definitive cause of death.

Chamberlain revealed she is “grateful” for her wrongful conviction and years in prison, because it changed the country’s legal system, for the good of all Australians.

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Lindy and Azaria Chamberlain at Uluru. Picture: Supplied.

It was 32 years after Azaria went missing from her tent at the Chamberlain’s Uluru (then Ayers Rock) campsite on August 17, 1980 that a death certificate was finally issued, officially citing the cause of her death as “a dingo”.

“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 — it used to be all police — as a result of that trial. If I’d been let out at the time, if I’d been found not guilty at the trial, we wouldn’t have those laws,” Chamberlain tells Do.

“What’s happened to me has been able to make it better for other Australians and for that I’m grateful.”

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Michael and Lindy Chamberlain at Ayers Rock (now Uluru). Picture: Barry O'Brien

Chamberlain — who Do describes as “tough and resolute” but also “funny and warm” — says she has never been bitter about what she endured because she believed it was God’s will.

Seventh-Day Adventists, the Chamberlains’ faith was the subject of much public scrutiny and conjecture in the years following baby Azaria’s death.

“I always had the feeling that at some stage God would say ‘enough’s enough’, and you’re coming out (of prison),” Chamberlain tells Do.

“To me, I was never a victim, because I knew I had a clear conscience and God knew I had a clear conscience, so it doesn’t matter what anyone else believes because me and God knew the truth.”

Lindy and Michael Chamberlain arrive at court in Darwin. Picture: Barry O'Brien

Sporting short, ruffled multi-coloured hair and smiling widely for most of the interview, Chamberlain also tells Do her eldest son Reagan — who was aged four and in the tent with Azaria when she was taken by the dingo — had a flashback where he remembered “noises” and the sensation of the dingo walking over him.

The memory was triggered when a puppy ran over his back, not long after the family had moved to America, she said.

Up until that point, the family thought Reagan had been fast asleep when the dingo took Azaria.

“I thought it had come back to get me and so I played dead until you kicked me and spoke, and then I realised you were there and it was OK,” Chamberlain said her son told her after the puppy incident.

Michael and Lindy Chamberlain leave court in Darwin in 1982. File picture

The most emotional moments in the Anh’s Brush With Fame interview come when Chamberlain recalls the same son trying to hide under her bed in prison so he could stay with her, hearing her mother describe the pain and “big, dry sobs” of her youngest son Aidan when he was told Lindy had been sentenced to prison, and giving birth to a baby girl, Kahlia, in Darwin hospital, while in custody.

Lindy Chamberlain was sentenced to life in prison when she was eight months pregnant. She served three years, during which time her daughter was raised in foster care.

“It was a very painful process,” she says of Kahlia’s birth. “Because I knew the moment she was born they were going to take her off me. So every moment of the birth I fought it, (it was) ‘like keep her inside, she’s yours, the minute she’s out, she’s not’.”

Do said he wanted to capture the strong spirit of Lindy Chamberlain on his canvas.

“There was a time in Australia when everyone had an opinion on Lindy Chamberlain and what happened to baby Azaria. Sentenced to life behind bars for her murder, Lindy would wait decades for the truth to come out and the legal record to be set straight. I want to know what kept her going and capture that today on canvas,” Do said.

• The interview airs on ABC on Wednesday April 24 at 8pm

Anh Do with Lindy Chamberlain in his studio. Picture: Supplied