Azaria’s story says much about Australian attitudes

After 32 years, the disappearance of the baby girl which has animated conversations and opinions from Ballarat to Broome has hopefully reached a defining conclusion.

Even before the first inquest, it was a mystery that had the nation talking – and judging – about exactly what had happened to the 10-week-old on a desert night in August, 1980. Two early inquests fed this chatter and speculation.

First there was Dennis Barrett’s inquest finding that a dingo had taken the baby, then, following the discovery of blood in the family car, Coroner Galvin’s inquest that led to the murder trial which saw Lindy Chamberlain serve three years in jail.

Then the baby’s jacket found in the desert prompted a Royal commission and the couple was exonerated.

While a further inquest under John Lounds delivered an open finding, yesterday’s finding has more than three decades later come full circle and confirmed the cause of death as the dingo.

For the Chamberlains, this finding will be a concluding absolution or at least a public vindication of their constant advocacy of the potential danger of dingoes.

Few would dispute that the whole ordeal has turned their lives upside-down and that they have paid in gross disproportion for what has legally been confirmed as an accident. But no doubt even with this finding there will be many who will long to keep the mystery alive and pontificate on insubstantial defining evidence. Some will continue to knowingly mutter with a heartfelt and unshakable conviction that she was guilty all along.

From the very beginning, one of the most startling aspects of the grim story was the readiness of the public and the media to have a defining opinion on the case.

Whether by the bar or the barbecue there was a tendency to endless speculation made not only without evidence that has since come to light but without a fraction of the material that was presented to each of the unfolding courts. Perhaps the desolation of the desert and phantom-like violation of infantile innocence fired the public imagination but it was preconception and prejudice that kept it alive. The saga is over but perhaps what is most revealing is what its history says about Australia as a community and its willingness to judge.