Despite spending exactly half his life in the dark shadow of his baby daughter Azaria's death, Michael Chamberlain has been remembered as a man who didn't allow the cruel tragedy to break him.
Mr Chamberlain was enormously determined during his decades-long fight to prove nine-week-old Azaria was killed by a dingo in the Northern Territory outback in 1980.
But there were two things that still plagued his mind in the days before he died last week following complications from acute leukaemia at the age of 72.
"He did want an apology from the Northern Territory and it still hasn't been received," his defence lawyer through the ordeal and close friend Stuart Tipple said outside Mr Chamberlain's memorial service on the NSW Central Coast on Monday.
The NT's acting chief minister Natasha Fyles said the government would look into a formal apology.
"Elizabeth Morris as the coroner in 2012 acknowledged the pain and the loss and said sorry," Ms Fyles told AAP.
"In terms of a formal apology, if that's what the family would like then that's something the government can look into.
"Our sympathies to his family and friends, it's obviously a very sad time for his loved ones."
Mr Chamberlain was also still fighting "bureaucratic challenges" to have a memorial plaque for Azaria placed at Uluru, Mr Tipple said.
Azaria's disappearance from a tent during the Chamberlains' family holiday at Uluru sparked one of the most polarising and long-running legal sagas in Australian history.
Mr Chamberlain and his then-wife Lindy were ultimately convicted and then exonerated over their daughter's death, but vindication didn't come until the fourth inquest in 2012 when a coroner ruled Azaria had been killed by a dingo.
Azaria's death began a challenging chapter in the Chamberlain family's lives, eldest son Aidan told the hundreds-strong service at Avondale College Seventh Day Adventist Church, as he described the toll it had taken on his father.
"He was a great man in so many ways, yet so broken and crushed in many others," Aidan said, flanked by his siblings, Reagan and Kahlia.
The strength and determination his father showed, when so many may have failed, was admirable, Aidan said, choking back tears.
While his life may have been dominated by "that trip to the rock", Mr Tipple said the legacy his friend was leaving behind as a passionate fighter for justice, was important.
"Despite being cruelly wronged, he was able to see the good in imperfect people and the good in an imperfect world," Mr Tipple told the service.
"A lesser man would have given up, but not Michael," he said.
Michael and Lindy Chamberlain, who was also at Monday's service, both remarried after their marriage fell apart in 1990.
Mr Chamberlain's second wife Ingrid, with whom he had a daughter Zahra in 1996, said she was proud of her husband's achievements as a successful writer and academic.
"He was not a perfect man but he was perfect to me," she said, as she praised the undivided care he had given her after she suffered a debilitating stroke in 2011.
The family laid Mr Chamberlain to rest at a private funeral service.
Born in Christchurch in 1944 before moving to Australia in 1964, Mr Chamberlain was a deeply religious man once serving as a pastor in the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
