A Dingo Ate My Baby

by Brian Dunning
February 25, 2025

In 1980, an incident took place which, over the decades, would come to be regarded as Australia's most infamous case of miscarried justice. Simultaneously — and very oddly — it introduced a comedic phrase into the pop culture lexicon. This bizarre juxtaposition of tragedy and comedy casts an eerie light over this famous story, which many people outside Australia might not know anything about. A young couple, Lindy and Michael Chamberlain, was camping at the famous Uluru (then called Ayers Rock) in the middle of Australia. One night, other campers heard Lindy shout something like "A dingo ate my baby" or "A dingo took my baby," and it became clear that their two-month-old baby daughter Azaria was missing. Police were summoned, but tiny Azaria was never found — and comedians had a new catchphrase. Why?

I have a longstanding policy of not doing episodes that exploit tragic deaths. There's little point anyway; it's not like I'm going to do one week of documentary research and uncover some truth that the police missed for decades (it's not like I'm Michelle McNamara or anything). I'm making a slight exception in this case, because we're not here to talk about the death, but about a popular phrase and how it ended up as a familiar one in pop culture. But more than that, the phrase comes from the alleged horrified cry of a mother who just witnessed the unthinkable — and pop culture has turned it into a joke for decades, it having even appeared in Seinfeld, The Simpsons, The Rugrats, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

If true, that's an injustice that we have the opportunity to clear up today.

Uluru — formerly known as Ayers Rock, the name given to it by the first white Australians who came across it — is probably the single largest thing you will ever see. The giant single piece of red sandstone rises 350m, and to walk just once around its base, you would travel as far as a 10K footrace. It has to be seen from close up to truly appreciate its immenseness. It is a sacred place to the local Indigenous Australians, the Anangu, who have decorated it with rock art. It has waterholes around its base, and so attracts both wildlife and tourists alike.

A dingo is a medium-sized, lean canine with a bushy tail, pointed ears, short fur, and typically displays a reddish or sandy coat color. They are more active at night than during the day, and may travel alone or in small packs. The dingo is very much a dog. Its trinomial name is Canis lupus dingo, so its closest relatives are the grey wolf (C. lupus lupus), the domestic dog (C. lupus familiaris), and some 30 or so other subspecies. They're all much more closely related to each other than any of them are to a coyote, the jackals, the foxes, or other wild dog species like the Ethiopian wolf or the African wild dog. So a dingo can reproduce with regular domestic dogs without any problem, and although this does happen, it's surprisingly rare. A 2023 study conducted at the University of Sydney tested the DNA of 307 wild-caught dingoes. The vast majority were pure dingoes, with no dog DNA markers at all. Of those few that did have them, zero were 50/50 hybrids; their dog ancestry was probably from a great- or great-great-grandparent.

The reasons for this are manifold. First, the two subspecies tend to avoid each other. They have different behavioral patterns. Dingoes often travel in very small, tight knit packs, and are aggressive toward dogs that are not a part of their social group. Second, the killing of dingoes is encouraged in most parts of Australia, as they kill sheep and other livestock; so human intervention keeps them away from those areas. The exceptions are the conservation areas. Especially in agricultural parts of the country, there are still bounties on them (which are increasingly controversial); as well as trapping and poisoning. Dingo fences are used to keep dingoes away from such areas so they don't get the physical opportunity to interact with dogs. And when we say dingo fence, we mean fencing on an Australian continental scale: the longest stretches 5,614 km and seals off the entire southeastern part of the country.

In 1980, Uluru was inside what was then called the Ayers Rock-Mt Olga National Park, since renamed to its original Anangu name, Uluru-Kata Tjuta. As a national park, conservation and wildlife management were practiced, so there was no culling of dingoes. In the wild they are apex predators who maintain the balance of ecosystems by controlling the populations of smaller animals. This reduces overgrazing and aids in the regrowth of vegetation, which in turn supports various other species. They also control the numbers of smaller predators like foxes and cats, thus contributing to the biodiversity of native birds and small mammals, and improving the overall health of the ecosystem. Thus dingoes were left alone by park management.

On the fateful night, the Chamberlains were sitting around a campfire with a group of people. Lindy got up to go check on Azaria, asleep in the tent. Everyone present heard her scream. She screamed that it was a dingo she saw leaving their tent, shaking its head, and padding off into the brush; though whatever it carried in its mouth was obscured by the darkness and the dingo's silhouette.

Everyone scrambled to find baby Azaria. Other campers, police, trackers both white and Indigenous Australian; blood was found everywhere in the tent. The Chamberlains, meanwhile, were inconsolable and out of their minds with grief and horror. But days passed, and there was no good news. Nothing found except the blood.

Police, meanwhile, had to consider every possibility, and searched both the bush and the Chamberlains' vehicle. After about a week, baby Azalia's jumpsuit was found four kilometers away, soaked in blood about the neckline. This is consistent with how predators typically kill their prey, with a quick and strong bite force on the neck and carotid arteries. It is also consistent with the wounds left by a murderer who cuts a person's neck — and that possibility is just as consistent with the findings of forensics experts who detected traces of blood on the seats of the Chamberlains' car.

Lindy Chamberlain found herself on the defense stand in a murder trial. Defense witnesses — mostly the other campers who had been present — all said they believed her claim that a dingo had taken the baby. But prosecutors had managed to piece together a competing narrative.

While the campers were all being jolly at the campfire, Lindy got up quietly to "check on Azaria." She picked up the baby, quietly carried her into the car, then slit her throat; catching most of the blood on the jumpsuit but spilling some onto the seats. Why on Earth would she have done this? The prosecutors had a suggested motive. The Chamberlains were Seventh Day Adventists, therefore Lindy must have murdered Azaria in some fanatical religious ceremony. The prosecutors also claimed — falsely — that the name Azaria means "sacrificed in the wilderness." In fact it simply means "helped by God" — or could also just be a nice name that her parents liked.

Lindy was found guilty of having murdered Azaria, and was sentenced to life in prison. Her husband Michael was convicted of being an accessory after the fact and was given a suspended sentence.

A year later, the convictions were appealed, but the appeals were rejected.

A year after that, the convictions were appealed again on different grounds, but those appeals were rejected as well. It seemed that Lindy Chamberlain would spend the rest of her life in prison.

When dingoes breed, they raise the pups in dens. These dens can be just about anything: a hollow log, a burrow abandoned by some other animal, or a natural cave. Sometimes they will even dig their own burrows. The rest of the time they live in whatever cover is available, whether it's dense brush, a thicket, a pile of rocks, anywhere they can find a bit of shelter. Those who live in small packs often have these little lairs grouped together. Around Uluru, there are many such places, often near the waterholes.

In 1986, British climber David Brett was having a go at a climbing route on a less-frequented side of Uluru. Unfortunately he fell and was killed. Once he was reported missing, it took eight days for search parties to find his body: such is the size of Uluru. During that search, police came across something they hadn't expected: an infant's jacket, torn and weathered, found amid numerous dingo lairs.

Within only five days, Lindy was freed from prison. A new inquest was held, and though it took two years, the court overturned both the Chamberlain's convictions. Four years after that, Lindy was paid $1.3 million in compensation for her wrongful imprisonment. It was reported that the amount didn't even cover their legal bills, and the years of strain drove the Chamberlains to divorce. A month after she'd been sent to prison, Lindy had given birth to another daughter, Kahlia, who was taken away and placed with a series of foster parents. Today the case is considered Australia's most infamous miscarriage of justice. It was also a cautionary tale about the perils of "trial by public opinion," as it's been observed that public opinion against the Chamberlains may have influenced their original convictions.

So, basically every part of this story is a negative one. A horrible thing happened, and its consequences were all harmful. So why is "A dingo ate my baby" a line for comedians? It seems extraordinarily ghoulish.

My proposed answer to that question is a single word: exploitation. Authors and filmmakers pounced on the story. The Chamberlains made a little bit of money from the media, but not nearly as much as they could have. In 1988, a major Hollywood movie was released dramatizing the story, called Evil Angels in Australia and New Zealand and A Cry in the Dark in the United States and other countries, starring Meryl Streep and Sam Neill as the Chamberlains.

And if you're wondering where the comedians got their catchphrase, now you have your answer:

And Bob's your uncle. She actually said "The dingo took my baby," but pop culture gets lots of movie quotes wrong. I believe that when the phrase is used in a comedic way, there's no disrespect intended. Most people outside Australia probably have no idea that it comes from a true story, let alone such a tragic one. I'd never seen the film, and personally I had no idea where the quote came from.

There are a lot of things everyone agrees probably aren't best to joke about, and this certainly qualifies. It's probably a lesson for all of us in taking that little bit of extra trouble to learn any true backstory there might be when we craft a joke or write a movie or a story. That's why I keep the rule I talked about at the top of the show: not to exploit tragic deaths, especially not for something as silly as a podcast. I hope I avoided doing that today, and hope my purpose in telling the story of the catchphrase was a part of the solution, and not a part of the problem.

Now that we know what had just happened to Lindy Chamberlain when she shouted what she did, it is clearly monstrous to make fun of it. It demonstrates the opposite of empathy. But take even the most far-gone Flat Earther. Nothing is learned from making fun of them; doing so adds nothing to you. But being empathetic toward them, to learn what drives the belief, to learn what made them adopt the belief, to learn how they see the world through the lens of this belief; all of that makes you a wiser person. And truly listening to their story validates them. Showing empathy is a win-win scenario.

By Brian Dunning
Follow @BrianDunning