Road to justice
Playing Dr Michael Chamberlain gave Sam Neill insight into the maligned family’s harrowing experience, writes Holly Byrnes
IT was a mother’s terrified cry in the night, made famous by Meryl Streep as Lindy Chamberlain in the 1988 film Evil Angels: “A dingo’s got my baby.” For the Chamberlain family, the real disappearance of their nine-week- old daughter and baby sister Azaria, from a campsite near Uluru in the Northern Territory, would mark the beginning of four traumatic decades in which Lindy would be wrongfully accused, charged and imprisoned for the child’s murder; while a shadow of guilt and suspicion fell over husband Michael and their surviving offspring, Aidan and Reagan.
For actor Sam Neill, who played Dr Chamberlain in the movie, the mocking of that desperate moment continues to fill him with a quiet fury.
“It’s a sort of joke in America in particular, when they hear an Australian accent, someone will say, ‘A dingo’s got my baby’, in Meryl’s accent. And people chuckle,” he says, “but this was the moment a mother lost her child and I go, ‘Look, you know what? That isn’t funny. That isn’t funny at all’. And I like to make people think about that. That it’s a horrible thing,” adding firmly, “and I won’t stand for it.”
Neill has remained a staunch defender of Australia’s most maligned family, lending his voice and support to a new documentary, Lindy Chamberlain: The True Story.
Featuring interviews with Lindy and her children, as well as archive footage of her late former husband Michael (who died from leukaemia complications two years ago), the two-hour special reopens their wounds and turns the spotlight back on those responsible for this legal injustice and never- ending tragedy.
Marking 40 years since Azaria went missing, the family are disarmingly candid in sharing their enduring pain and loss; as well as the ongoing fight to right the wrongs against them.
Neill still finds it staggering that the NT Government and Police have yet to officially apologise to Lindy, after falsely accusing and imprisoning her for three years.
“I thought by the time we made our film [in 1987] that things would be done and dusted. But their suffering just goes on and on. The fact that they’ve never had an apology, no comment from the Northern Territory government or the police up there, it just absolutely staggers me. It’s outrageous,” he says.
“It’s one thing to endure the tragedy of having your child killed but then to have it compounded by having to put up with decades of this whole horrible stuff, it’s devastating.”
The Crown’s case against Lindy was at best circumstantial, at worst a wilful “fitting up” of evidence to convict the beautiful young mother, who was judged in the court of public opinion for being too calm and calculating in the face of such a grave loss.
Neill argues the media were also to blame for driving much of the sensationalist coverage, which to this day still sees Lindy as a polarising figure – did she, or didn’t she?
“A lot of it was sexism and misogyny, blind ignorance and malice, just plain malice,” the 73-year- old recalls, “and also misunderstandings, you know. But the good thing about Lindy and Michael was that they were very stoic people, amazingly so.”
Visiting the family in the months before filming Evil Angels (marketed outside Australia as A Cry in the Dark), Neill shares a snapshot he says captures the family’s innate decency.
It was 1987, and the family had bought a plot of wooded land near Cooranbong, on the NSW Central Coast, with plans to build their dream bush home. K
Access to their property, Neill recalls, was through a “derelict and neglected” orange orchard, “just sort of overgrown, with fruit just all over the place.”
Walking through the grove one afternoon with the Chamberlains, he thought to start collecting the abundant fruit, which lay plentiful on the ground.
“So I go pick up a dozen really good-looking ones and say ‘ These will be great, we should take them back’ but they said
‘No, no, we can’t do that ... they don’t belong to us.’”
It left a deep impression on the Irish-born New Zealander, who says: “That’s just who they were ... rigorously honest.”
He remembers the weekend with them with fondness: “They were very hospitable and pleasant company. And the kids were very nice, very sensitive.”
The documentary showcases that sensitivity, with Reagan revealing how he blamed himself for his sister’s death, as the dingo had walked over him to get to her.
ahlia, who was born in 1982 when Lindy was imprisoned, but removed immediately from her mother and fostered out to another family, presents as a buoyant, optimistic and caring sister, despite the terrible disruption to her childhood and sneering asides from strangers.
But it is Aidan, now 47, who seems to still carry the weight of the trauma on his shoulders; introverted and, not surprisingly, suspicious of any media attention.
Neill says the ‘fake news’ back then makes it relevant to audiences today.
“In many ways, it does sort of presage what’s going on now with these ridiculous conspiracy theories about 5G towers. You know, this anti-vax nonsense,” he says, “people are prepared to believe anything.”
LINDY CHAMBERLAIN: THE TRUE STORY 7.30PM, SUNDAY AND MONDAY, 10