Dingo innocent – the Azaria Chamberlain mystery, was launched in Cairns in October 2002.    ISBN 0 9577290 0 6  pp199  rrp $19.95

So far, every commentary on the Chamberlain case from the courts, print, film and now an opera, has been constrained by a two-alternative straitjacket of Lindy or the dingo when neither is tenable on the evidence.

Dingo innocent shows there was evidence pointing to a third alternative that was discussed at length at the first two coronial inquiries. This evidence has been ignored ever since.

This case was dubbed the Australian criminal trial of the 20th century. More than $20m of public money was spent on it. And it’s still all wrong. The lessons have not been learnt.

Lindy was convicted in the first place simply because the jury did not accept the dingo story. The jury were right not to accept the dingo story but wrong to convict. This is the reason many Australians still think Lindy is a murderer.

Lindy had nothing to do with Azaria’s death. This is the ‘truth’ the Chamberlains have always sought. Lindy has suffered horrendously throughout this tragedy. Great compassion is shown for Lindy in the book. She is not judged. Dingo innocent is aimed at understanding, not judgement.

The debate about the Chamberlain case has been muddied by red herrings and side shows. Gender. Race. Media. Religion. Forensic science. The real issue is the establishment of evidence, and how to think and reason clearly through that evidence.

The two-alternative straitjacket. You can never prove anything by simply disproving something else. There is hard evidence that denies dingo involvement. This does not prove Lindy was guilty of murder. There is hard evidence that Lindy had nothing to do with Azaria’s death. In turn this does not prove the dingo was guilty. To prove anything you must have sufficient evidence to support your proposition, and there must be no evidence that denies it.

The problem is not a question of complex legal issues. Dingo innocent is written from the perspective of a potential juror. We are all potential jurors. Juries are central to our criminal justice system. We need to understand evidence and how it is used. But juries are not infallible. Ironically the key reason the majority of the High Court of Australia upheld the conviction was their reluctance to overturn a jury verdict. High Court justices are not infallible either.

When mistakes have been made it is essential to understand what went wrong or we learn nothing. The same mistakes can be repeated. Dingo innocent is different to all previous commentaries. Dingo innocent is not a difficult read. Dingo innocent tackles the real issue and ignores the sideshows.

Michael Sharkey reviews Dingo innocent - the Azaria Chamberlain mystery

for Arts Nexus magazine Issue #49 December 2002 - February 2003

[Michael Sharkey is a poet, raconteur, book reviewer and academic.

Michael has published poetry in a number of countries, a libretto, several books and others as editor, including An Illustrated Treasury of Australian Humour.

His career spans both freelance writing and editing, as well as academic teaching in a wide diversity of settings. He is currently a book reviewer for several national and State Newspapers, literary magazines and scholarly journals and recently was the co-editor of the respected Ulitarra literary magazine.

Michael is currently senior lecturer in English at the University of New England.]

The final chapter of Buck Richardson's book is entitled 'Guardian angels'. He might have labelled the entire book 'Where Angels Fear to Tread'. Richardson is a brave man to enter into a traumatic event that divided opinion in Australia following the August 1980 announcement of the disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain. The first inquest into the event, and the subsequent inquests, trial, and appeals provoked controversy in private and public conversations far beyond December 1995, when the third inquest returned an open finding on Azaria's death.

A generation of Australians has arrived and come to maturity since 1980, but the case still reverberates in the legal literature and elsewhere  as is evident in the chequered eight-year course of

production of Moya Henderson's opera Lindy, leading up to its opening performance on 25 October this year. I doubt that we have heard the last of the tribulations of the Chamberlains and their supporters, and those of the dingo is innocent school. For one thing, the opera will provoke fresh discussion. In commentary on the opera to date, we have seen parallels drawn between the demonisation of Lindy Chamberlain and that of the English traveller Joanne Lees, and of asylum seekers. Psychologists have ventilated opinions on the 'cultural madness' that compels Australians to focus their anger on women and on those who are unfortunate enough to be misguidedly perceived as common enemies. If this sort of comment can stem from an opera, what will reviewers and opinion-shapers have to say about Buck Richardson's contribution?

I trust that Dingo Innocent will be seen for what it is: a humane and balanced layman's inquiry into the Chamberlains' saga and the legal process that adopted an either-or view of the possible causes of the infant's disappearance. Richardson writes out of deep compassion for the individuals at the centre of the storm, and out of a conviction that the Australian justice system is not infallible, for all that it might be, as he says, 'one of the best in the world'.

Richardson's painstaking review of the inquests, trial, appeals and Royal Commission should give readers pause to reflect on what they understand of the mechanisms of justice in Australia. He seeks to uncover confusion relating to the propensity of the court to adopt ‘either-or' logic in connection to this case (and, by implication, others). He queries the dismissal of witnesses' credibility, and the selectivity of presentation of evidence. He considers the status of conflicting opinions by expert witnesses, and their potential to confuse a jury, citing Justice Brennan's comment that 'it may be that the jury is not the ideal forum for debating and resolving such issues'. 

There is more along these lines. Selectivity of emphasis on facts is shown to be a useful ploy for counsel for the defence as well as for the prosecution, but Richardson tellingly argues that in such critical matters as legal proceedings, the search for truth should not sideline the recognition of falsity. It is Richardson's major contention that in failing to pursue alternative readings of the events of 17 August 1980, consideration of the case discounted all but two possibilities: that Lindy Chamberlain killed her own child, or that the child was killed by a dingo. Richardson agrees with the view of Justice Deane, who 'ventured that neither murder nor the dingo was a tenable explanation' and that both appeared 'far fetched' or 'fanciful'.

In his final chapters, Richardson sensitively teases out a third hypothesis, one that was fleetingly considered by two of the High Court judges. I won't give the game away, and I hope that the spirit in which he advances his conclusion will be welcomed. At the same time, I feel sure that his conclusion will ignite further debate and controversy. Richardson's tone in this section is of a piece with his manner throughout. His probing questions relating to the differences in opinion between judges on the matter of acceptable evidence, and on interpretation of points of law leave a great deal to the readers of this book. Richardson asks 'What does it mean when the majority Justices have no reasonable doubt about opportunity in this case, when Justices Murphy, Deane and Morling, on the same evidence, seem not only to have doubt, but in Morling's words, have "serious difficulty" with the issue?' We will do well to follow Richardson in reflecting more deeply on the implications of either-or interpretations of the Chamberlain trial and many other, contemporary matters before our courts.

Dingo Innocent is a lucid, persuasive book. It is a significant contribution to the literature relating to a trial that focused national and international attention on Australia. It deserves to be read by everyone who thinks deeply about the ways in which catastrophic, divisive events are reported and handled. Richardson argues for humility to acknowledge miscarriages of justice and errors of interpretation, and when he pointedly concludes that 'Saying "sorry" appears to be beyond the egos of the elites in this country', we know that he isn't referring to the demonised 'chattering classes'. I congratulate Buck Richardson for his dedication to seeing justice prevail, and I hope that his book will achieve its aim of enlightenment.

Michael Sharkey

Dingo bites judiciary

Dingo innocent: The Azaria Chamberlain Mystery

By Buck Richardson

LeapFrogPress $19.95

Review by Teresa Giacomi in The Cairns Post Weekend Extra, Saturday, November 9, 2002

Kuranda resident Buck Richardson was so incensed by the legal backflips and evidence bungling that surrounded the Lindy Chamberlain case, he wrote a book about it.

It took him four years.

Inspired by his daughter's experience as a juror on a criminal trial in the 1990's, the former engineer and current-day publisher felt motivated to produce Dingo innocent as both a potential juror and a citizen concerned by the "injustices" the case highlights.

Using material available on the public record, Richardson covers the conduct of the inquests, trials, appeals, retrials and their verdicts, which resulted in Lindy being found guilty of the 1980 murder of her daughter Azaria and serving three years of a life jail sentence before being acquitted and released in 1986.

Although well written, there are times when this 199-page volume becomes hard going, and the author knows it.

At one point, when he enters the area of legal argument heavily, Richardson suggests that his readers may wish to skip the following chapter or, perhaps, return to it later.

On the whole, however, the book is a surprisingly good read and, while some may feel the "Dingo Baby Murder Mystery" has been done to death  - there is an opera doing the rounds at the moment!  -many Australians will, no doubt, still harbour concerns and suspicions they would like satisfied.

Certainly, despite all the column centimetres devoted to the subject (both Lindy and Azaria's father Michael Chamberlain, have published books on the subject), the burning question of what happened to Azaria at Ayers Rock all those years ago never has been explained.

And while Richardson draws his own conclusions, Dingo innocent is not so much about what happened but how it was handled legally, socially and politically.

How could Australian juries, courts and police have got it so wrong?

At what point did the case get political and why?

And  the question the author considers the most important for any democracy: could it happen again?

"Evidence cannot present itself," says Richardson, who believes most of the problems associated with the Lindy Chamberlain trials were evidence problems.

He reports that when his own daughter was a juror, she and fellow jurors got no briefing on the legal reasoning associated with evidence so, in his book, he revisits the evidence presented in the Chamberlain case.

In Dingo innocent, Richardson puts the main protagonists on trial again and, ultimately, finds Lindy and the dingo innocent of the killing.

In line with the precedent of "beyond reasonable doubt", he puts forward a third scenario, one that he believes would have acquitted Lindy right at the start had it been explored in a court of law.

While Richardson believes Lindy was innocent of the charge, he also believes she and Michael were hiding something and his book explores their behaviour before, during and after the tragedy.

He examines their beliefs  - both remain committed Seventh Day Adventists -  and their attitudes as parents.

For Richardson, the mystery that still hangs over the case is the result of a promise,  a promise two parents made to each other, their children, and their god.

Ultimately, he concludes, that Lindy and Michael,  now divorced from each other and remarried  were not "evil angels" as John Bryson's book on the subject was titled, but guardian angels.

Dingo innocent is a provocative look at, arguably, Australia's most famous criminal trial.

Many of the problems the work encountered in finding a mainstream publisher would, probably, have stemmed from its controversial standpoint.

National columnist and broadcaster Phillip Adams, who was one of the many to read Dingo innocent in its prepublication form  commented:

Your version of events may be well argued  I think  they are  but. . . I'm afraid this book could only be published when, in due course, the principal players have all gone to God.

Tableland author and playwright Ken Cotterill said "this book is an embarrassment to the judiciary."

Buck has tried to get feedback on his book from the legal profession. In early 2004 Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court suggested he send the book to Ian Temby AO QC, the former Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.

Here is Ian Temby’s response.

Dingo innocent - the Azaria Chamberlain Mystery

There always seemed to be something amiss with the Chamberlain case. When I read John Bryson’s Evil Angels, I had some suspicions of my own as to what happened at Ayers Rock on 18 August 1980. Who didn’t I suppose? However, for me suspicions are not enough. I am an advocate of evidence. So for four years I researched - High Court Judgement, Royal Commission Report, all the transcripts of the coronial inquiries, the trial and the Royal Commission, and various books including Through My Eyes by Lindy Chamberlain and Beyond Azaria - Black Light White Light by Michael Chamberlain. Dingo innocent - The Azaria Chamberlain Mystery was the result.

Published in October of 2002, no one who has read the book has challenged my conclusions, including Ian Temby QC, the former Director of Commonwealth Prosecutions (see below).

If you are interested in receiving a copy to decide for yourself please email me at: buckrichardson@leapfrogoz.com.au