Darwin police sift sand

Press, 26 November 1981, Page 8

Darwin police sift sand

NZPA Ayers Rock A painstaking search among grains of red sand began yesterday at Ayers Rock.

The object is to find remains of the baby, Azaria Chamberlain, or anything else that may help the coroner at the new inquest into her death in August last year. (A preliminary hearing will be held on Monday in the Darwin Magistrate’s Court to set a date for the new inquest that was ordered last week by a Supreme Court judge who annulled the original inquest finding that Azaria had been killed by a dingo.) About 20 police, working in small teams, are excavating and sieving sand to the east of the Ayers Rock campsite. They are digging to a depth of more than 40cms, placing each shovelful into a sieve for screening over a wheelbarrow. The area is within a few metres of where Azaria’s parents, Michael and Lindy, pitched their tent the day before their daughter disappeared. The tent site has been marked out in bright orange plastic by the police. Using white tape, the police have marked off what a spokesman, Sergeant Darryl Manzid, described as a “primary” and “secondary” search area. The first is about the size of an Olympic swimming pool and lies inside the latter and much bigger area which is about 100 m by 150 m. The police then went carefully over both areas with a metal detector and marked for further investigation any spot that showed a reading. Some of these spots have since been examined to reveal only a variety of discarded tins and other metals.

The area falls gently towards Ayers Rock and lies beneath the hill commonly used by people watching the sunrise.