With her husband Rick, Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton has been providing photos and copies of letters for the retelling in Goulburn of people’s reactions to a dingo taking her baby from the family’s tent in 1980. Photo: Chamberlain-Creightons.
Answering an unknown number on his mobile phone at a service station one recent Tuesday afternoon, Blake Selmes was left speechless.
Then, for the next 20 minutes the Goulburn Lieder Theatre Artistic Director was engrossed in a conversation with Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton.
The woman he had been studying so closely and the protagonist of his next play, Letters from Lindy, was on the phone and equally engaged.
“She let me know she had heard that I was using multimedia (for the play) and asked what I might like to use out of her eight terabytes of personal digital archival media,” Blake said.
Lindy had been alerted about the play by her friend, artist Neville Dawson. He was the first one to make contact with the Lieder via email when he heard they were staging playwright Alana Valentine’s acclaimed verbatim (documentary drama) play. He offered his paintings to support the multimedia production.
Blake was not born when a dingo took Lindy and Michael Chamberlain’s baby Azaria from a tent near Uluru on 17 August 1980. Now he is well read on the tragic story since scheduling the play.
Having Lindy unexpectedly on his phone, asking him what he needed left him agog.
“My mind went spinning; I wrote up a huge list and sent it back,” he said. More conversations followed, leading to one of Australia’s most polarising figures to agree to come to Goulburn for the play and answer questions afterwards.
Assistant director at the Lieder Theatre Brian Hill organised travel and accommodation arrangements for Lindy and her second husband Rick Creighton. He enjoyed their conversations, saying she was engaging, agreeable and funny.
Lindy will give a Q and A session after the play on 18 June.
Brian said half the theatre’s seats sold in the first two hours of this special extended presentation. Subsequently, all 135 seats have sold out.
“That’s unheard of here; it’s fantastic,” he said. “It just shows the amount of interest that she still generates and that people still want to hear what she has to say.”
Archival boxes stacked to the roof represent a mountain of correspondence that followed the disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain. Also on the set are Lieder Theatre Artistic Director Blake Selmes and Assistant Director Brian Hill with mementoes and letters. Photo: John Thistleton.
Blake discovered from Lindy the widely reported 20,000 letters sent to her in the aftermath of Azaria’s disappearance was an underestimation. “It’s more like 40,000,” he said.
Each one has been carefully categorised. “The collection is her memorial to Azaria. There was nothing else left of Azaria,” Blake said.
Running from 12–20 June, Letters to Lindy draws on the letters sent to Lindy during and after her ordeal, revealing a powerful cross-section of public opinion, compassion and prejudice.
Thirty-two years after the baby’s disappearance, the fourth inquest found nine-week-old Azaria was taken by a dingo from a tent at Uluru.
Today Lindy is pleased a regional theatre is continuing to tell her story.
She said, “Well, I think it tells my story, but more than that, it tells everybody else’s story. It tells the story of the parents and grandparents of the present generation, and how it affected them and their lives.
“In that way, it’s important because, you know, your generation studies it as a what not to do. But at the time it was happening, people were being fooled and didn’t know that they were being fooled,” she said.
In the 1980s social media was not on Facebook or X, but was still happening across neighbours’ back fences, or on CB radio. Humans loved to gossip, she said.
“And no matter which way that’s done, they should learn to look at the facts first. And I guess the thing we learn from history is we don’t learn,” she said.
Australian artist Neville Dawson in the foyer of the Lieder Theatre with one of the paintings from his powerful Chamberlain Suite. The works offer audiences a rare opportunity to engage with an artistic response to the story alongside the theatrical production. Photo: Blake Selmes.
Letters to Lindy explores events surrounding the Chamberlain case, the impact of media, public opinion and the stories we tell ourselves about other people.
“To be able to hear Lindy’s own reflections after experiencing the play is a remarkable opportunity for us and for audiences,” Blake said.
Letters to Lindy at Lieder Theatre, 52 Goldsmith Street, Goulburn.
Friday 12 June – 7:30 pm
Saturday 13 June – 7:30 pm (cocktail night)
Wednesday 17 June – 7:30 pm
Thursday 18 June – 7 pm (Including Q&A with special guest Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton)
Friday 19 June – 7:30 pm
Saturday 20 June – 2 pm
Saturday 20 June – 7:30 pm (cocktail night)
Online bookings: theliedertheatre.com/letters-to-lindy
Original Article published by John Thistleton on About Regional.
