22

Release

IN THE MIDST OF THIS GROWING POLITICAL STORM, fate was to play another card. An English tourist, David James Brett, a young man still in his twenties, had spent four years in Australia before returning to his home in Kent. He had become fascinated by the occult, and dabbled in mystic rituals. He mixed with others who shared this fascination, and together they explored the so-called ‘black arts’. But when his friends became convinced that they had received guidance for him from the spirit world, he was aghast. It was his destiny, they said, to fulfil the purpose of his life by committing suicide. That was enough for Brett. He packed up and went home to England.

He returned to Australia in mid-1985. But the command from ‘the other side’ continued to haunt him. He had a premonition of his own impending death, and spoke of it as an event that would have significant consequences.

It was hot at Uluru in January, as usual. The sun blazed down onto the rock like a blowtorch trained on an anvil by some celestial blacksmith. It would have been foolish to have attempted the climb during the full heat of the day, and Brett decided to leave it until late in the afternoon.

Uluru can be scaled at only one point, a sloping spur of rock on the eastern end of the rock known to white men simply as ‘The Climb’. To the Pitjantjatjara, this place is Itjraitrai. It was here in the Dreamtime that a Kuniya, or python woman, came to bury her eggs. The task complete, she travelled south to Alyurungu where she and her people made camp. They were there attacked by Liru, or poisonous snake warriors. Alyurungu lies on the south-western face of the rock about halfway between Itjraitrai and Mitakampantja, the place where the arrow-shaped patches of lichen still remind the Pitjantjatjara of the fate of the lizard men who perished in the fire set by the enraged bellbird brothers. At Alyurungu, the marks of the battle between the Kuniya and Liru are said to be still visible; the scars left by the warriors’ spears evident as pockmarks in the side of the rock, and the bodies of two slain Liru remaining as blackened marks left by the spasmodic flow of water that sometimes courses down a vertical cliff face.

David Brett probably knew little of these legendary creatures whose domain he was entering as he began his climb — although, with his interest in mysticism, it is doubtful that he was completely indifferent to the spiritual significance of this place. It was nearly sundown, and he had taken some additional clothing in case it became cold. Several people saw him as he followed the chain strung from a series of short pipes embedded in the surface of the rock as a guide to tourists. Above that, he would reach a point which, from the ground, looks as though it might be the top, but is only about halfway up. Brett was a fit man, but he rested there for a while before swinging his knapsack over his shoulder and resuming the climb. Some tourists on the way down saw him as he made his way higher.

Uluru does not rise to a sharp peak. The top is a vast undulating plateau of stone. Climbers follow white marks painted on the stone over protuberances, down into fissures, and then up the other side until they reach a point near the centre marked by a cairn to indicate that the summit has been attained. At the shoulder of the rock. the route swings from the south-east to the north-east, the path having obviously been chosen with care to keep tourists away from the precipitous sides which plunge more than three hundred metres to the ground below.

Precisely what happened to Brett may never be known. Perhaps the heat proved too much for him. The Rock operates like a gigantic thermal bank, and the western side, in particular, remains hot long after the sun has stopped burning the necks of the climbers. Life in Kent would have offered Brett little preparation for such an extreme climatic condition. Perhaps he simply became distracted by the grandeur of the place, and lost his way. Those of a more mystical bent, be they Pitjantjatjara, or white people like those who shared Brett’s interest in the occult, would no doubt have assumed a more arcane explanation. Whatever the cause, he was seen moving uncertainly near the shoulder of the cliff by a well-educated young Pitjantjatjara couple called Tanya and Ewen Edwards. They immediately went for the rangers but, when they returned, could not find him, and assumed he had made his way back down.

Brett’s body was found on 2 February 1986, seven days after he had last been seen on the shoulder of the rock. He had fallen into an area between the side of the rock and a small hill of dirt and rock — an area, as it happened, immediately adjacent to the little gully where Azaria Chamberlain’s jumpsuit, singlet, and nappy had been found. The two massive patches of lichen merge into an arrow shape only when viewed from the south, looking obliquely along the south-western face of the rock. From that vantage point, the gully and the area beside it are almost aligned. The body, like the clothing found five-and-a-half years earlier, had been pinpointed by this ‘arrow’ that was already ancient when Captain James Cook first set foot in Botany Bay.

The body was badly decomposed, and several parts, including the right arm, were missing, apparently having been chewed off by dingoes or goannas. Sergeant Van Heythuysen roped off the area and organised a search party, hoping to find at least some of the larger bones. During the course of this search he found a baby’s matinee jacket. It was dirty, and half-buried in an area of red sand within a rough semicircle of vegetation about 70 to 100 metres from Brett’s body. The area was later excavated, and a small white button was found. It was 153 metres from the position in which Azaria’s other clothing had been found in 1980.

The Crown had invited the jury to be sceptical about the existence of this matinee jacket, but Lindy had given the police a good description of it, right down to the fact that it was a ‘Marquis’ size 000 with a lemon-scalloped edging. On 5 February 1986, she was driven from the Berrimah Penitentiary to police headquarters in Darwin. She broke down when shown the jacket, but had no hesitation in identifying it as Azaria’s. And there was ample evidence to confirm it. The woman who had given it to her had also knitted a matching bonnet and booties, which the Chamberlains still had. Furthermore, a comparison of the jacket with the jumpsuit showed a corresponding pattern of bloodstaining on the two garments. There could be no dispute that it was the right jacket. The earlier suggestion had been wrong.

Following this discovery, the Northern Territory police commissioner finally recommended the establishment of a judicial inquiry. It seems, however, that even this recommendation did not meet with immediate acclaim. According to a Darwin newspaper report, until 9.00 a.m. on Friday 7 February, ‘government officials were confident that no inquiry would be ordered and that Mrs Chamberlain would remain in gaol’. But there was a special meeting of cabinet at about 10.00 a.m., and the attorney-general Marshall Peron, later held a press conference, to announce that:

I am here to advise that the Territory government has decided to institute an inquiry into the Chamberlain case. The decision follows advice received from the Solicitor-General and Police Commissioner on what they regard as significant new evidence. They have advised me that the discovery of a baby’s matinee jacket near the base of Ayers Rock and its subsequent identification by Mrs Chamberlain may have a bearing on the case.

The government proposes to take whatever steps are necessary, including the possible introduction of legislation at the forthcoming sittings of the Legislative Assembly, to set up the inquiry. At this stage terms of reference have not been drawn up nor has the composition of the inquiry body been decided.

I can also advise that a short time ago His Honour, the Administrator, accepted the advice of the Executive Council that the balance of Mrs Chamberlain’s life sentence be remitted and that she be released from Darwin prison. I expect that will take place this afternoon. The decision to so recommend to His Honour was made in the light of Mrs Chamberlain’s need for unrestricted access to legal advisers to prepare for the inquiry. Although Mrs Chamberlain’s remission is subject to the usual condition of good behaviour, it is not my intention that she be taken back into custody — regardless of the outcome of the inquiry.

The next day, the Adelaide Advertiser carried the headline ‘Leaked Letter Prompted Jail Release’. The Northern Territory News had apparently obtained copies of reports by Dr Andrew Scott and Professor Ouchterlony and had decided to contact Behringwerke, the manufacturers of the crucial antiserum in West Germany. They were informed that Dr Baudner and Dr Storiko had written to the Department of Law on 20 January 1986, expressing concern at what they perceived as a misunderstanding of their position.

The Northern Territory News set this up as the lead story, but the acting editor subsequently received a telephone call. ‘I know what’s on the presses, but I’ve got a better story for you,’ he was told. ‘We’re letting her out.’ By the time the story was run the next day, its potential impact had been sapped by the drama of Lindy’s sudden release. The public interest lay in her impending reunion with her family, and in the inquiry to come.

The chief minister later explained the sudden decision in the following way:

When the garment was found in the area where the English tourist fell to his death we considered this to be new evidence. It was obvious that an inquiry must be held and it would be proper to release Mrs Chamberlain on bail or parole or whatever until the outcome of the inquiry was known.

We would not want her to languish in prison while an inquiry was in progress. I think any government would have done this. Because she has served more than three years’ imprisonment already we had to also look at possibilities of the future. The inquiry outcome might not be known for anything up to a year. So, we decided that she had served enough imprisonment regardless of the possibility of being confirmed as guilty. For this reason it [was] decided to remit the balance of her life sentence.

This explanation did not wholly allay criticism of what the Sunday Territorian described as a ‘sudden and unexpected government cave-in’, and there were some questions about why this had occurred when the government had only recently rejected an application for an inquiry and the police commissioner had said he had not been aware of anything related to the discovery of the matinee jacket that ‘affects the veracity of the prosecution’s original case’. Whatever the reasons, the announcement had caused further controversy, with some decrying the decision to release a child killer, and others rejoicing that an appalling injustice had been at least partially redressed.