Dingo Baby

Another Tuesday another playgroup, though since Dixon's whipped Jackie off to Bowral for a week on a health farm, I've been running the show alone.

This morning we started an under the sea theme, which seemed a good idea until I realised I don't know any songs about the subject, so as a last ditch recovery attempt, I took Ella's new Wiggles CD into work and tried to get them to sing along to that - a complete and utter disaster because the Wiggles sing too quickly and switch into funny pirate voices and the kids in my playgroup struggle to sing their nursery rhymes, let alone Pop Goes the Weasel.

And the so-called volunteers were no use at all, they just fixed me with exactly the same puzzled expressions I was getting from the kids, and when it was all over they hung about like wet teatowels while I set the table and chopped the fruit and poured the drinks for morning tea, though as they'd all brought bloody pears I had to steal someone's tangerine from the fridge just to add some colour. For all I know it was the CEO's tangerine and I'll be getting my P45 (or equivalent of) but after the death stares for the Wiggles CD, death stares for an inferior fruit salad was just a bit more than my heart could bear.

Still, I had time for a chat with the Mums, all of them talking about Madeleine McCann's mother because the story was all over the breakfast news this morning.

We've had hardly any coverage of this story here in Australia but I've followed it on the internet and you can see the pain on the mother's face, which I find agonising. My English teacher thought I ought to go into journalism but the behaviour of certain elements of the media confirms I made the right decision not to; hardly any coverage of a missing child then a load of speculation when there's the slightest hint of a story developing out of it. I notice the papers swing from support to condemnation very swiftly before any of the facts have been reported. It stinks.

Strangely, the British mothers think she's involved in the crime, which I still refuse to believe. They've analysed her behaviour and decided she hasn't shown the right amount of emotion, which is ludicrous isn't it, because I'm guessing there's a good chance the poor woman is all cried out and just going through the motions.

Anyway, the Australians aren't so sure and they caution against jumping to conclusions, especially given their history with Lindy Chamberlain, who served part of a life sentence for the supposed murder of her baby Azaria before she was acquitted. Turned out she'd been telling the truth all along and a dingo really had taken the baby from a campsite at Ayers Rock; the Northern Territory police so keen to clear the case up that they'd overlooked vital evidence in their hurry to limit the damage to the tourist industry and tried to pin evidence of blood in the Chamberlain's campervan, blood which actually turned out to be rust.

It was only when a man fell to his death from Ayers Rock (this isn't an infrequent occurence, though you won't find details of it in the guide books), that they found his body in a dingoes' lair along with Azaria Chamberlain's matinee jacket and they realised she'd been telling the truth.

They took the dingo danger much more seriously after that, but without the dingo story to dampen the frenzy, I still fear Kate McCann's going to be framed for a crime she hasn't committed.