It was almost three years after Lindy Chamberlain was jailed in November, 1982, convicted of the murder of eight-week-old daughter Azaria, who disappeared at Ayers Rock in August, 1980.

I was editor of the Sunday Territorian and it was a gloomy grey wet season day. A journalist had noticed “a bloke who looks like Michael Chamberlain” wandering around the outside of our locked offices trying to find a way to get in.

It was Michael Chamberlain and our first meeting is something that has stuck with me forever.

It was to be the first of several coffee and water catch ups we would have over the passing months leading up to Lindy’s eventual release.

His death is a cause for sadness. In the time I got to know Michael I found him to good man, a good father, softly spoken and considered in his thinking, who loved his wife deeply.

Michael’s first words on the day we met at the Sunday Territorian told me a lot about the sadness and sense of hopelessness swirling through his mind.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” he said matter-of-factly to myself and my deputy editor Frank Alcorta. “Bob told me I should drop by and have a chat.”

The Bob he was referring to was Bob Collins, the then-Northern Territory Labor Opposition Leader.

Bob had been championing the Chamberlain Innocence Committee’s calls for a judicial inquiry into the Chamberlain’s case.

He too had been a regular visitor to the Sunday Territorian and was firm in his belief that the Chamberlains were the victims of a miscarriage of justice.

My meetings with Michael always left me with a heavy heart. And that first comment he ever made to me pretty much summed up how lost he was. He was a man true to his belief in God but left broken hearted asking why his family had been torn apart.

It was like meeting with a friend with a problem who was lost and wanted someone to talk to about it and you had no answers to help him.

Michael and his family were enduring a long hard journey with more lows than highs and it was wearing him down. Our talks were not what you would expect.

There was no angry talk about being wronged by the Northern Territory Government or those who gave evidence resulting in Lindy being sentenced to life in prison, something which was in complete contrast to Lindy, who myself and my deputy Frank Alcorta met and had interviewed in Berrimah Women’s prison facility.

Michael was always composed and quietly spoken. He would talk about the kids and Lindy, how he admired her strength, how his visit had gone, and how she was coping with prison and the changes it had made. He was particularly concerned about her dramatic weight loss.

He often referred to how beautiful Lindy was. There had been talk of divorce but he wanted none of that.

She was his angel, the soft beautiful love of his life … a life being wasted in prison for a crime she didn’t commit.

He reflected often about their children and how they were coping with growing up without their mother. I remember him being particularly concerned for Aiden.

The love he had for his children was clear. He opened his heart about his fears for their wellbeing and coping with the constant pressures of what was happening around them. It was clear seeing their mother in prison and having to say goodbye after each visit was gut-wrenching and distressing for them all.

There was sadness for Lindy and her not being able to bring up Kahlia, and be there for crucial years for her sons. Michael knew the family’s life had changed for ever and what he had dreamt it would be like was never going to happen.

Life was never going to be the same.