The museum took the car, sold by Dr Chamberlain for an undisclosed sum, in a ceremony watched by family, lawyers, academics, journalists and others who had fought to overturn the convictions of Michael and Lindy Chamberlain for Azaria’s death.

Looking at the car, still with the number plates 4ENSIC, he had chosen with deliberate heavy irony, Michael Chamberlain said he knew the museum would take even better care of it than he did.

The issue of how Azaria died had been settled two years ago by coroner Elizabeth Morris’s finding that a dingo had in fact taken the baby after all, snatched from the family tent at Ayers Rock on August 17, 1980.

The Torana, which had been stripped to its shell in inquiries that followed Azaria’s disappearance, had been sought by the museum to add to its vast array of artefacts, clothing, letters, photographs and film about the story.

Dr Chamberlain, watched by his daughter Zahra, 18; son Aidan; daughter-in-law Amber, and first grandchild, Amelia, nine months,  said: “The case represents a gross injustice but also freedom of forensic science, which eventually saw Lindy and I exonerated in 1988.

“It was one of the worst perversions of justice and forensic science in Australian history. We [the family] had gone as babes in the woods. A Catholic lawyer described us as lambs to the slaughter. The family were grateful to be alive and to share in the freedom of the great Australian outdoors.

“We had lived by the credo that if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. It was dead wrong.”

The first coroner, Denis Barritt, found in February 1981 that a dingo had taken the baby. But later in 1981, a British pathologist, Professor James Cameron, advanced the view that there had been a murder. During a new investigation, the Chamberlain’s car was seized and Sydney forensic biologist Joy Kuhl claimed there was baby’s blood in the car and on family possessions.

In 1987, royal commissioner Justice Trevor Morling found that a reasonably instructed jury in possession of further evidence would have been compelled to acquit. The royal commission revealed there was no blood in the car, or on the Chamberlains’ possessions.

Stuart Tipple, the Gosford lawyer who had doggedly represented the Chamberlains for years and had shed more than a tear in the process, said: “Our system of justice failed, but people power revealed the truth.”

Dr Belinda Middleweek, who had done a PhD thesis on the media in the Chamberlains' case, did not universally condemn the media and said there were a number of voices of reason.

John Bryson, author of the definite book Evil Angels, said there had always been voices of reason in the judiciary. Justice James Muirhead, the trial judge, had been so appalled by the jury’s guilty verdict that he had gone on to campaign against trial by jury.

Dr Ray Watterson, a justice campaigner from Newcastle University, said the dingo was now recognised as the apex predator that it had always been. His students had found 200 cases of dingo-human incidents, some fatal, in Australia in the 20 years since Azaria disappeared.

Museum director Dr Mathew Trinca said: “This story should never be forgotten by Australians. I think this collection will help the process.”