An autopsy report stated that the girl died last November from chronic starvation and dehydration but did not offer a time of death.

The child smelt of urine and offensive body odour.

The mother, 35, and father, 47, who cannot be named, were charged with murder two weeks after the death and were committed for trial to the Supreme Court last Wednesday.

Neither entered pleas when each appeared separately via audiovisual link.

The mother told magistrate Michael Morahan in Newcastle Local Court she was not legally represented, because “welfare had stuffed up” her paperwork.

Six volumes of evidence were tendered to the court, including interviews with the father and two teenage daughters.

They told investigators the mother said she found the girl at 7am on November 3. The mother said she tried to resuscitate the child but could not, because there were ants and black vomit in the girl’s mouth.

The father and the daughters said only the mother saw the body.

Before he was charged, the father told police in an interview: “There was bull ants and black vomit and I want to know why there was black vomit and bull ants.

“What killed her? Allergies?”

The child weighed nine kilograms at the time of death but a document said she weighed 20.5 kilograms in February 2006. The father told investigators the girl “ate like a horse” but was unsettled when they moved from Matraville, in Sydney, to Hawks Nest in August last year.

He said she stopped eating lunch and dinner when they moved but ate big breakfasts and drank “a stack” of fluids.

He conceded she was “a bit thinner”.

“I put it down to getting used to the place,” he said.

The father said the mother did not tell the rest of the family about the death until 11am.

He said he rang 000 about 1pm.

Ambulance officers told police the mother was in another bedroom when they arrived.