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Media outside court in Darwin.
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The death of Michael Chamberlain has revived memories of the terrible ordeal that the Chamberlain family endured and the massive media hysteria about the case . Despite all that has been written about the affair , there are still aspects of the episode which , I feel, would be interesting to explore, difficult as this may be after the passage of time since the taking of the baby Azaria at Ayers Rock / Uluru in 1980.
Still alive are members of the Northern Territory government at the time who could provide detailed information about the obvious many tense conferences held in the corridors of power over the years. Unfortunately, a person I believe who must have played a large part in feeding the media frenzy is no longer alive. Knowing his modus operandi , his outlook , I reckon he fanned the media fires with gusto .
Very early in the Chamberlain ordeal, I was press officer for the Northern Territory Leader of the Opposition , Jon Isaacs (ALP ) , and a Sydney newspaper offered me the front page anytime I could get Isaacs to make a statement about the case , such was the insatiable media demand for anything related to the Chamberlains . Isaacs rightly refused to play the media game . In recent times , this blog has run posts about the case using material from the files of Darwin agronomist , Rob Wesley-Smith , founder of Northern Territory Civil Liberties , and information from other sources.
One post dealt with the extensive Chamberlain Papers Collection in the National Library of Australia , the subject of a fascinating 2005 talk by manuscript librarian Graeme Powell at a Macquarie University symposium , Sydney, Lindy Chamberlain in the audience, the script and notes for the 1988 film Evil Angels , which starred Meryl Streep and Sam Neill , mentioned . --- (Peter Simon )
One post dealt with the extensive Chamberlain Papers Collection in the National Library of Australia , the subject of a fascinating 2005 talk by manuscript librarian Graeme Powell at a Macquarie University symposium , Sydney, Lindy Chamberlain in the audience, the script and notes for the 1988 film Evil Angels , which starred Meryl Streep and Sam Neill , mentioned . --- (Peter Simon )
