Australia owes a debt of apology to Michael Chamberlain, says an author who wrote a book about the 1980 disappearance of baby Azaria Chamberlain at Uluru.

Dr Chamberlain died on Monday from complications reportedly caused by leukaemia. He was 72.

John Bryson says Dr Chamberlain lived a life marked by tragedy and overshadowed by the disappearance of his daughter and the ensuing public and legal circus.

The case dogged Dr Chamberlain and his ex-wife Lindy for 32 years, until a Northern Territory coroner finally ruled in a fourth inquest in 2012 that Azaria was taken by a dingo.

Bryson wrote A Cry In The Dark, which was made into the 1988 film Evil Angels starring Meryl Streep and Sam Neill.

He remembered Dr Chamberlain, a former pastor of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, as very committed but somewhat blinded to the public sentiment surrounding the case.

"He was an early convert and was very, very devout," Bryson said.

"This shaped him as religion shapes everybody, that it removes from the faithful any belief in logic and inquiry; these aspects of personal life are replaced by the articles of faith."

He said their beliefs made the Chamberlains slow to understand how the tide of public opinion was turning against them as they grieved for the loss of their child, taken from the family's tent as they holidayed at Uluru on August 17, 1980.

"What was going on around them was an extraordinary wave of idiocy and malice, they didn't pick up really on how dangerous that would be for them," Bryson said.

The couple saw the loss of Azaria through the prism of a belief that everything happened according to God's plan, which was ultimately inappropriate, he said.

"They were acting as if they should not be nervous or afraid of what the world was about to do to them."

Lindy Chamberlain with her infant daughter Azaria at Uluru in August 1980. ( Supplied )

A marriage under strain

The couple weathered two inquests and were both convicted and sentenced to jail in 1982, Lindy for life for murder and Michael for being an accessory to murder, for which he received a suspended 18-month sentence.

Lindy gave birth to their fourth child, Kahlia, while in prison in 1982, and was released in early 1986 when Azaria's blood-stained matinee jacket was found near the base of Uluru.

A third inquest in 1995 returned an open finding making no ruling either way, but by then the Chamberlains' marriage had collapsed under the strain.

"[Their marriage] was solid up until Lindy went to jail, and then I think really certain resentments afflicted each of them," Bryson said.

"By the time she was released she had been through so much that they were irreconcilable."

Dr Chamberlain remarried and went on to have another daughter, Zahra.

But in 2011, his wife Ingrid had a stroke that rendered her paralysed and in need of intensive care, and Dr Chamberlain became her primary carer.

Exoneration was bittersweet

In an interview with the ABC's Richard Fidler after the fourth inquest, Dr Chamberlain said he had only recently been able to look properly at pictures of Azaria, 32 years after her death.

"Before I didn't dare to look at her because I still had to fight for justice and clear my name," he said.

"Maybe we were just a little bit not open enough, but this was the nature of the church… it wanted its people to be in the world but not of the world," he said.

"We weren't very well known, not appreciated, and [thus] to be suspected."

Dr Chamberlain said the ultimate exoneration was a bittersweet experience.

Michael Chamberlain holds up a copy of the death certificate of daughter Azaria Chamberlain in June 2012. ( AAP: Xavier La Canna )

"Sheer relief is only the beginning of describing my feeling, because look how long it's taken," he said.

"It felt like a triumph of good over evil, but now I want some explanations.

"Why did this administration of justice fail us, why weren't the answers given quicker, why wasn't the opportunity to know the truth of what happened to our daughter brought forward, and why wasn't it allowed to rest after the first inquest? Why did it go so wrong, and who caused that?"

He said he was not seeking revenge or liability but wanted those accountable for the errors to be revealed, and for Australia to learn from the case.

"This case was all about the alienation, the dehumanising, the depersonalising of us, and ultimately the demonising of us," he said.

But he said that despite the public persecution, he was grateful to be Australian and for the support the family received from those who believed their innocence.

"Ultimately I have lived a fortunate life," Dr Chamberlain said.

A life of tragedy

Bryson said Australia owed the Chamberlains an apology.

"He has undergone a lot of tragedy," he said.

"I know Michael would like his legacy to be bound up with activism against injustice," he said.

But when asked how he would remember Dr Chamberlain, he replied: "Sadly, I'll remember him sadly."

"The first time I saw him he was surrounded by journalists and I knew I was looking at a man who didn't understand the trouble he was in."

'NT Police could have done better'

At a media conference, NT Police Acting Assistant Commissioner Kate Vanderlaan said police could have done better in Mr Chamberlain's case, but stopped short of issuing an apology for his treatment.

"My understanding is that the apologies have been given," Ms Vanderlaan said.

"People have admitted mistakes and I guess there is no point now in going back over that.

"It is a sad occasion on Mr Chamberlain's passing and we acknowledge that, but there is no point in going back to re-apologising or revisiting those things that have already been discussed many times," she said.

Ms Vanderlaan said since 1980 forensic procedures had come a long way.