While much of Australia has spent the past three decades arguing over how Azaria Chamberlain died, the Pitjantjatjara people at Uluru were never in doubt. Azaria's father, Michael Chamberlain, said the Aboriginal people were convinced that a dingo could have taken Azaria when she disappeared at what was then Ayers Rock on August 17, 1980.

Yesterday at the Darwin Magistrates Court, the deputy coroner, Elizabeth Morris, has agreed when finally she handed down the official verdict that a dingo had snatched the baby from her bassinet at night and dragged or carried her away. The finding comes after 32 years of many twists including three previous inquests, a royal commission and the 1982 sentencing of Lindy to life in prison for murdering Azaria. Michael was given a suspended sentence for being an accessory after the fact.

''Dr. and Mrs Chamberlain, Aidan and your extended families, please accept my sincere sympathy over the death of your special and loved daughter and sister, Azaria,'' Morris said yesterday. Pausing slightly to compose herself, she said that a certificate had already been drawn up certifying that Azaria had died of a result of a dingo attack.

Journalist Malcolm Brown has reported on this divisive case about a dingo taking a baby from the start. He was present for the final verdict. He was also able to witness how the families assembled as Morris, also becoming emotional herself, expressed sympathy for the loss of Azaria. Michael, daughter Kahlia, son Aidan and his wife Amber, Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton and her husband Rick forgot all the stresses and conflicts as the official verdict was handed down. Lindy and Michael, who were both long remarried, hugged. Aidan, the boy who was six when the dingo snatched his sister, wept and hugged his mother.

Brown has struck up a rapport with Michael and Lindy at the first coroner's inquest when they were desperate for support and they recognized him as a fellow churchgoer. Afterwards, it went deeper than that. Brown saw them as a decent, upright couple incapable of doing what was alleged against them. The Chamberlains were, in the eyes of many Australians, odd in their responses particularly in the way they handled the supposed trauma of losing their baby to a wild animal. However, there are no rules to say how people should react to such an event.

The new evidence that Elizabeth Morris had to consider consisted mainly of accounts of attacks by dingoes and hybrid-dingo crosses on children, including a fatal attack to a nine-year-old boy on Queensland's Fraser Island in 2001 as well as fatal attacks in NSW and Queensland.

''In considering all the evidence, I am satisfied it is sufficiently cogent and excludes all other reasonable possibilities to have findings, that what had occurred, after Mrs. Chamberlain placed Azaria in the tent, dingo or dingoes entered the tent, took Azaria and dragged or carried her from the area,'' she said. Outside the court, their lawyer, Stuart Tipple said he considered the finding appropriate. ''We have three of the Chamberlains' family, Aidan, Michael and Lindy, who really know what happened that day,'' he said.

''No longer will Australians be able to say dingoes are not dangerous and will not attack unless provoked. We love this beautiful country but it is dangerous,'' Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton said. ''We would ask all Australians to be aware of this and take appropriate actions and not wait for somebody else to do it for them,'' she added. Meanwhile, Michael Chamberlain said that establishing what happened had taken too long. ''However, I am here to tell you that you can get justice even when you think that all is lost,'' he said.

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