ANY link between Australia's most publicised murder trial and the Bega Valley art world would seem highly unlikely, but there is and it's very 'up close and personal'.
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Tanja artist Veronica O'Leary was the official court artist for ABC Television during the 1982 trial of Lindy and Michael Chamberlain.
This was the first time any television station in Australia had employed an artist to do spontaneous court drawings for use in its daily news broadcasts.
Lindy Chamberlain was on trial for murder and her husband for being an accessory after the fact.
The charges related to the death of their 10-week-old daughter Azaria at Ayres Rock on August 17, 1980.
A Northern Territory coronial inquest finding in February 1981 that Azaria had been taken and killed by a dingo was quashed by the Northern Territory Supreme Court in November 1981.
A second inquest in December 1981 resulted in the couple being committed for trial.
The trial began on September 13, 1982, and during the following 32 days Veronica O'Leary sat in an otherwise closed court drawing images of the major players in the proceedings.
Many of these images were subsequently televised, transmitted and viewed in homes around Australia and to a lesser extent around the world.
The drawings, all 172 of them, are now to be sold and already the Australian National Library has shown interest.
The drawings are of great significance in that they are a visual record of what was, and still is, arguably the most famous criminal trial in Australia's legal history.
"They are a visual record of the day-to-day drama of the court and all its players," Ms O'Leary said.
The drawings represent a change in the style of court drawings from previously formal representations of the courtroom to rapid impressions of the people involved and the day-by-day proceedings.
However, their value is not just in money terms; they also represent a significant experience, one which affected Veronica's life then and still does today.
"When the trial ended I was still undecided but after Lindy was pardoned I believe the original coronial finding was probably the right one," she said.
"That trial made me realise how vulnerable we are when in court charged with a major offence and how your chances are so dependent on the skills of your lawyer.
"It showed me that any action taken out of context can be twisted to a point where your future is taken out of your hands and becomes public property.
"The incredible density of the evidence was such that you needed a PhD to understand it.
"The decision was largely influenced by public opinion, the quality of the legal argument and the predisposition of the jury whom I believe were bamboozled by the tedium of looking at highly scientific evidence during the many weeks of the trial.
"I came away from it very sceptical about the whole legal process and I still have that feeling that the court is a theatre and that the participants are actors playing a part.
"Public opinion was hotly divided in Darwin.
"I was at a restaurant the night the guilty verdict was publicly announced and half the people in the restaurant stood up and cheered.
"It was Australia's first major example of 'trial by media' and it divided the nation."
