A group of young people reportedly paraded in the street outside with T-shirts emblazoned with the words: "The Dingo is Innocent!"

When the jury was empanelled, and the prosecutor showed photographs of a dingo, one taken from a distance, another of a dingo "blown up", the double meaning sent the jury into fits of laughter, and I knew then that Michael and Lindy had little or no chance of being acquitted.

Nobody was prepared to accept that a dingo had taken 10-week-old Azaria on that dreadful night 30 years ago, on August 17, 1980, at Ayers Rock.

The Crown had a mass of scientific evidence to put against the couple, the prime exhibit being Azaria's jumpsuit found at the base of Ayers Rock a week after she disappeared. But part of its case was that the dingo story was ridiculous.

Ian Barker, QC, the Crown prosecutor, said in his closing address that if the claim had been that Azaria had been taken by a crocodile at East Alligator River, that would have been easier to accept. But a dingo? The jury did not believe it, instead accepting the Crown scenario that Lindy had sneaked into the family car, cut the baby's throat and perhaps stuffed the body into Michael's camera bag. The couple were found guilty: Lindy of murder, Michael of being an accessory after the fact.

There followed a long saga – Lindy put away for life with hard labour, failure of their Federal and High Court appeals, a citizen's campaign, the gathering of further scientific evidence – and finally, with the discovery of Azaria's matinee jacket at the base of Ayers Rock in 1986, a collapse of will on the part of the Northern Territory Government, and a royal commission.

The royal commission, under Justice Morling, quickly found there had been serious flaws in the scientific evidence.

It turned out that there was no blood in the Chamberlain's Holden Torana, or so little as to have been incidental and insignificant, that the "blood" that had been identified and sampled had in fact been sticky substances such as spilt milkshake or apple juice, which had collected enough Mt Isa copper dust to give a positive test for an ortho-tolidine test for the presumptive presence of blood.

There had been other serious failings in scientific processes, including the textiles evidence, which was supposed to demonstrate that Azaria's jumpsuit had been cut with a bladed instrument, and forensic consultant James Cameron's view that a bloodied handprint had been left on the jumpsuit (it was only dust – he had not tested to see if it was blood).

But the Northern Territory administration, as dogged as the pioneers who had penetrated that harsh terrain, was not giving up.

Mr Barker and Michael (now Justice) Adams were retained to represent the administration in the royal commission and, at the end, with the "blood" evidence upon which the Crown case was based effectively demolished, Mr Adams then painted a scenario that Azaria had been murdered by Lindy outside the car.

Justice Morling would not have any of that. The Crown had started with the murder in the car, he said. That was where they had to finish.

In the end, the only substantial evidence pointing to what really happened on August 17 was objective evidence about the dingo.

What was it? Well, tracks for a start. Lindy's mother, Avis Murchison, said she found paw marks on the space blanket inside the tent, but, in the hurried and haphazard way the police handled the inquiry, that evidence was lost.

The outside tent had spray marks which the first coroner, Denis Barritt – one of the few sensible heads who presided over this disaster – found "to the highest degree of proof required in law", were "sprays of blood coming from Azaria's head and neck". That evidence was also mishandled by police.

Dingo paw marks were seen going out of the tent, but the police camera did not work and precise images of them were never captured. Dingo tracks had been found leading out of the tent! Drag marks were found in the sand, lasting for 160 metres. A patch was found on the dirt where the dingo appeared to have put down a weight to change its grip, and the patch contained indentations consistent with a baby's jump suit.

A long time later, Hans Brunner, an expert on the identification of mammalian hair, traced by Chamberlain supporter Dr Norman Young, examined six hairs that had been found embedded in Azaria's jumpsuit and said they were canid hairs, consistent with having come from a dingo.

There was also objective circumstantial evidence relating to a dingo attack. There were about 150 dingoes at Ayers Rock in 1980, attracted to the area by free handouts of food from tourists. They had become bolder and bolder, nipping children. On June 22 that year, a three-year-old girl, Amanda Cranwell, was dragged from the family car by a dingo and had to be driven off by parents.

The situation was so serious that, before Michael and Lindy Chamberlain arrived at Ayers Rock with their three children on August 16 that year, rangers had put up signs in toilet blocks warning campers against feeding dingoes.

On the very day of the tragedy, Michael Chamberlain saw a dingo seize a field mouse and was upset by it. In the evening, when Michael and Lindy were casually talking to fellow campers, campers Bill and Judith West heard a growl from the vicinity of the Chamberlains' tent.

Lindy heard a baby cry from the tent. So did Sally Lowe, a camper she had been talking to. Lindy went to check, and, by her account, saw a dingo leave the tent with something in its mouth, and disappear into the night.

In the ocean of time that followed, questions were asked and asked again about the dingo. A news item was found in The Sydney Morning Herald from 1902, saying that a child was suspected of having been killed by a dingo in Queensland.

This reporter sent it to the Chamberlains' solicitor, Stuart Tipple, but no coroner's inquest findings could be located.

But, since then, dingoes have shown what might be thought of as their true colours, harassing people on Queensland's Fraser Island.

In April 2001, a group of dingoes stalked and killed nine-year-old Clinton Gage.

One lesson that might be learnt from this case is that collectively we have an anthropocentric view of ourselves, that animals regard themselves as subordinate to us and do what we say.

So, a circus keeper gives an elephant some treats then holds them away despite the elephant reaching out for more. It swishes its trunk and kills her.

A Melbourne family brings home their new baby and assumes that their beloved poodle won't mind their attention to the new addition. It waits its opportunity and kills the baby.

A tourist at Yellowstone National Park gives a grizzly bear a treat, then says: "Sorry fella, no more!", but the grizzly thinks otherwise.

But in 1982, when Michael and Lindy went on trial, and forever after at least in some parts of Australian society, the idea of a dingo regarding a five-kilogram baby as something special – untouchable because it belongs to the master race – that anthropocentric view remains.

And that is perhaps reflected in the finding of the third inquest into Azaria's death, in 1995, when coroner John Lowndes was not prepared to say a dingo did it. He left the question open.