From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. This is the morning edition. I'm Tammy Mills filling in for Samantha Selinger. Morris. It's Monday, April 28th. Gary, formally known as Fraser Island, is one of Australia's natural wonders. And every year almost half a million people enjoy its wild and sprawling environment. But as visitor numbers swell, the question of how tourists co-exist with some of the island's
oldest residents, the dingo becomes more important. 24 years after a nine year old boy was fatally mauled by two dingoes on Gary, strategies to manage the animal and humans haven't stopped attacks from occurring. Today, we speak with Brisbane Times journalist Courtney Crook on the story of the Dingoes of Gary. So, Courtney, to start, can you set the scene of Gary? What's the island known for and how
popular is it for tourists and holidaymakers? Yeah. So Gary or Fraser Island, as it was formerly known up until a few years ago, is a World Heritage listed island off the coast of Queensland. Uh, it's the largest sand island in the world, so it has remnants of tall rainforest. There's a really long stretch of sand beach, uh, freshwater lakes. I think Aura or Lake Mackenzie, as most people know it. Um, I think that has got to be one of the
most beautiful freshwater lakes I've ever seen or swum in. It's. Yeah, the whole island is Paradise. Um, so it's a it's about 300km north of Brisbane. Um, and it's estimated to attract nearly half a million visitors every year. So I would say it's definitely one of our most popular tourist destinations. And I think part of its appeal is, is how rugged and wild it is. So it's only four wheel
drive accessible. Um, a lot of remote camping sites. It's definitely a place that people would go to really just switch off from from the real world. Well, it sounds like an idyllic place to visit, but then, bordering its beachside resorts, they've actually got fences. And those fences are fitted with warning signs. So what do they say? So you got the eastern side of Gary. If you don't have a four wheel drive, you'll probably come over with a tour group or jump on a ferry on the
western side of the island. You come from Harvey Bay and that drops you straight into Kingfisher Resort, which is I think is the biggest and resort on the island, and it is probably the most popular. But it's bordered on all sides by dingo exclusion fencing, and that is just a very hard separation between dingoes or wongari, as they're known to the bachelor people.
Across 2000km² of forest and sand dunes and Fraser Island somewhere lurk about 300 wild dingoes, Most will never be seen, but those that are seen have become audacious and opportunistic in their dealings with people. And as we saw this week, the fault lies.
If you want to enter the beach on either side, you pass through gates and each are fitted with these giant big block letters. Danger. Then there's a warning underneath that aggressive dingo behaviour towards people as occurred in the area. Uh, and you're basically warned that dingoes can nip, bite or savagely attack without provocation. And it gives you tips on what to do if you encounter a dingo, if you feel threatened by a dingo. Um, yeah. And anyone leaving
that exclusion zone is encouraged to take a safety stick. Um, so there I'd either you walk past, you walk through the gates, you might see a bucket, you might see a bin. You might see a tree stump in there filled with these different kinds of sticks. Some are just big tree branches, sticks of bamboo, lengths of rubber. And you if you're going out and about, you want to have one of those on you. And I imagine, though, that the dingoes have been on Gary for a long time. Right.
Presumably they've coexisted relatively peaceful with humans, or should I say maybe humans have coexisted relatively peacefully with them. So what's the story of the dingoes? So I think they're one of our most identifiable native animals. Um, and we call them a native animal. In Australia, they were introduced between 3000 and 5000 years ago. And I think, interestingly, in doing this research for this story was to see
that they arrived as seafarers from South East Asia. So they would have been like an ancient domestic dog, uh, when they arrived. They're a canid, so they're related to wolves and coyotes, and they're apex predators. They're the largest terrestrial carnivore in Australia. Um, they're really powerful hunters, you know, they're they they they're so beautiful. They look like dogs. They look very approachable. But they are amazing predators. They, um, have a lot of of power. And, you know, they'll
hunt alone. They'll hunt in small packs. But they're also really opportunistic. So they're also like scavengers, which I believe coyotes are as well. And if you go back on, on Gary itself, um, to kind of when The Bachelor. So that's Gary's traditional owners, uh, lived on the island. They talk about there being two types of dingoes. So the, the wongari that we call today, the wild dingoes. But then the Waja and the Waja were their camp dogs.
They were basically like their companion dogs. They helped them hunt and track. They they protected them from bad spirits and and the wongari and then, you know, comes European settlement, colonialism. The bachelor were forced off the island. Uh, the dingoes, the. No more wages, the wages that returned to being wongari wild dogs. And I, you know, sort of looking at more recent history, the last, say, 30 to 40 years as we've become that tourist destination, as we've got more
people visiting and interacting with Wangari. Um, they become more habituated. They they become more used to people. They, you know, there's more interactions. And they were obviously losing a bit of their natural fear and caution of people or getting a bit bolder in their behaviour or, you know, people were were just actively interacting with them more. Uh, but they weren't seen as, as, you know, this animal capable of, of, um, causing a, an attack and a fatality, a serious threat,
I guess you would say. Yeah. So something must have changed, though, that there now were at this point where there's fences that separate people from that dingo habitat. So what's changed? I think the, the very big, crucial part of Gowri's history is when Clinton Gage died in 2001.
At Waddy Point, a memorial to Clinton Gage. The nine year old was on Easter holidays with his family when he was mauled to death in 2001. Experts say the timing of yesterday's attack was no coincidence.
That was nearly 25 years ago, actually, um, that happened on the 30th of April, and they were staying at Waddy Point and Clinton, nine years old at the time, gone for a walk with a with a friend. And he ends up Clinton being attacked by these two dingoes. And they fatally mauled Clinton, um, that his his father rushed over. His brother rushed over to try and help. Um, Dylan actually got bitten by the dingoes as well. So yeah,
extremely traumatic event. And I think talking to people, uh, you know, like Rob Appleby, who's an oncologist and, you know, went and did his PhD in 20 years of research over there afterwards. And Doctor Linden Bernoff, who is, you know, the senior Ranger over there was on the island at the time, and they talk about just a Linda as well, really specifically making that point that everything changed from that day. You know, that that very much became how do we
make sure this never happens again? Um. Oh my God, dingoes can attack. They can fatally attack someone they can kill. So that kind of really changed everything. We'll be right back. Well, it's interesting because, you know, saying that it's the case that kind of showed people that dingoes have this power and this ability to kill people. When we have, of course, a case that is etched in our cultural memory as
Australians is the Azaria Chamberlain case. And I guess listeners will already know this, but Azaria was just a nine week old baby when she was taken by a dingo while she was camping with her family at Uluru in 1980. And Lindy, her mother, was accused of her murder. She was exonerated, but it took years and years and years. And you mentioned before we spoke today that there's a link between Clinton and Azaria's case. Can you tell us
about this? Anyone who's familiar with that cases, most will be will know that Lindy went to jail and there were inquests and there were all these sorts of things.
A fourth coronial inquest into the disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain has ruled that a dingo was responsible for her death in 1980. Coroner Elizabeth Morris brought the 32 year saga to a close with an apology to Azaria's parents for the loss of their baby daughter. The coroner said that evidence about dingoes lurking at Uluru at the time, as well as hundreds of attacks by dingoes since Azaria's disappearance,
excluded all other reasonable possibilities. Outside the court, Michael Chamberlain said he hoped the.
Clintons Death and definitely some events. Some attacks that happened afterwards formed definitely part of that knowledge that a dingo
can attack, it can cause a fatality. And that was cited in that fourth inquest as one of the changing, you know, just how much our understanding of dingo behaviour and their power and predication and, you know, familiarization with people, um, can do that and definitely changed our understanding, I think definitely helped to by that point, there was probably a whole body of evidence that was cited in, um, exonerating Lindy from that, but it definitely formed part of that
evidence in our understanding of, you know, what they're capable of, because there's been attacks that have happened since then and over recent years, despite all these, what we or what people now know about dingo behaviour, and despite having these preventative measures in place Around the resorts like the attacks
still have continued. Right. And even I think Wednesday or the Thursday before Good Friday, a woman was bitten on the island and she was at a camping ground, I think, near Eurong, and she was was bitten, you know, literally just walking from the campsite down to the ocean on the hand. There have been dozens, you know, already this year. So there's already in 2025, been 31 incidents, I think last year, 2024 with about 147. But it's the year
before that, 2023. That really was, I think over 200, um, maybe even over 250 combined incidences because that was just after Covid, right? The Covid lockdowns, more people coming onto the island, more people potentially interacting with dingoes after they had a period of like not seeing people at all. Right. Totally. We had a lot of people probably visiting the island for the first time. So big influx. The big you know, people who don't know they're not well, um, seasoned travelers
to Gary. They're discovering it for the first time. I think you put more people on in any place where there's a wild animal, and those interactions are going to increase. So is it a problem with people or has something changed with dingo behavior? What Linda and what Rob say is we've got 99.9% of people doing the right thing. And they're really careful and they're really they follow the rules. They would not approach a dingo. They would, um, keep
their children close by. They would properly manage their waste and food and whatnot. We only need to have just one, you know, bad incident. But I their food conditioning that, you know, is so strong that they would only need to find it once. They would only need to know that that's a reason that food might present itself. Um, but I should mention as well that Linda said, you know, she's done a lot of research in this space, and
a lot of the attacks aren't food orientated. They're not, you know, most attacks aren't because the dingo is running at a person trying to get their food or, you know, be aggressive around food. Um, but the converse to that, I suppose, is that, um, as Rob said, food sets the stage. Food sets the stage for this interaction, for these interactions, for this curiosity, for this closeness. Yeah. Because you mentioned that the nature of a dingo and its
food conditioning response. What do you mean by that? Yeah. So you know that that I guess they're kind of, um, habituation is a word that gets used a lot. And that is they, you know, they're getting familiar then, um, they're associating. Oh, there's that. That person means there's that food source, you know, there's that bait bucket. I might get thrown that scrap of fish, something like that. I'll come back. And then they lose their fear of humans.
They get habituated. Um, and then they kind of. Yeah. And we see that that, that that's not uniquely a thing that happens in a lot of places where you've got, uh, you know, bears interacting with a township and rummaging through rubbish like that just becomes that, um, food conditioning. And I think in a way, I kind of set out wanting to understand why we had this, why why we still have these ongoing attacks, um, especially hearing about it over, you know, the summer or the Easter period. And it
feels like it might be every few weeks. And I'm like, well, why are these still happening? Like, what's is it the the animal behaviour? Or is it something that that's happening on the island? And I think I thought I was going to answer that and I didn't answer that, but I think that they've really put in some, um, amazing efforts to try and keep humans and animals safe and
apart from each other. But there's just so much. I you know, you're talking about trying to control or understand a wild animal, but you're also talking about trying to control thousands and understand the behavior of thousands of people. And even going to Eli Creek on an overcast, pretty mundane day. There's still busloads of tourists rocking up in these giant long buses driving down the beach. You've got groups there on a box, drinking and floating around the creek.
You've got children running around and playing. There's just so many variables in being in this kind of island environment, holiday mode that you can't control. So what's the priority here? Like, has there been any thought to actually reducing the number of people that visit the island every year? Like what's you know, how do you strike a balance between tourism
and protecting the tourists and also protecting the animals? So we had a sustainability, you know, an independent sustainability report that looked at a bunch of different tourist destinations in Queensland, including Gowrie, and sort of made some recommendations based on on their observations. And one of them was to kind of introduce a tourist cap. It reduced the number of visitors on at certain times of the year. And the
former labor, labor state government endorsed that idea. They endorsed that recommendation and to capture some numbers on the 20th busiest days of the year. The LNP, since coming into power late last year, have essentially said, no, we're not going to do that. Um, you know, they when I reached out to them for this story, our Environment minister, Andrew Powell, responded and said the government there determined that our wonderful natural areas like Gowrie are open and accessible
to all. So, you know, we're not suggesting that they would not remain open and accessible to all. It's just putting a little bit of a control onto how many people access that at certain times. The other thing, too, I think that is worth noting that I certainly didn't realise before starting this story, is that Easter right now
we're in the middle of dingo breeding season. We've got this massive influx of people visiting the island, but we have dingoes that are, you know, they're protecting their territories. They're warding off other dingoes. Then you've got all of these people in that environment at the same time. And there is research that has been conducted over a period looking at, you know, a section of time on Garry
and monitoring the attacks that occurred. And such a huge number had occurred during breeding season, which is March to May. And others, including Clinton. Clinton died during dingo breeding season. I think that it would be a idea worth exploring at some of these high season, peak season periods on Garry that also coincide with, um, times that we know that dingoes are going to be exhibiting certain behaviours, or they might be, you know, we can't this is this
is their island. This is their their home. And these are wild animals that we need to protect and need to allow to be their own species, and we also need to protect people. But yeah, in essence, I think that that a that a tourist cap and it's not just for the one group, it's not just for, um, dingo management. This is a World Heritage listed island that has been pummelled by four wheel drives, um, creating so much, you know, waste. This is an ecologically important site. It's
a marine conservation park. It's, you know, so many different species that could benefit from that break. And what are the island's indigenous communities say about this? How do they think best way forward? I think, you know, they're really
keen to obviously. Um, and I spoke to the Butchulla Aboriginal Corporation, um, community engagement officer, Tessa Wyatt, and, you know, she works very closely with Linda, uh, to look at these attacks to, you know, when an incident happens, how they communicate it, how they investigate it, and then how they further mitigate it. And they're not standing there saying that, um,
people shouldn't come. You know, we can't have tourists. Hungary. Tessa, as a spokesperson, said that, you know, they would love for the island to kind of have a cultural be led by cultural knowledge, which I think this is something that we're kind of grappling with all over Australia is that, um, you know, we've got people who have that cultural knowledge of land management or how to interact with the natural environment,
and their knowledge is being brought to the forefront. I think that they probably see shutting down the island or restricting numbers as a way that could be really beneficial, um, for, for the land, for the animals, for, for everything about it. Um, but, you know, they've their cultural knowledge was driven off. Gary. So this would be a chance for them to talk about, you know, they they had a harmonious relationship with the
land and the island for thousands of years. So I think it's worth paying attention to what they have to say on this. Well, thank you, Courtney, so much for joining us on the podcast. You're welcome. Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Josh towers, with technical assistance by Julia Carcasole. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. The Morning Edition is a production of The Age and
The Sydney Morning Herald. To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop, follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify and wherever you listen to our podcast. To support our journalism, subscribe to us by visiting The Age or smh.com.au. And sign up for our newsletter to receive a comprehensive summary of the day's most important news, analysis and insights in your inbox every day. Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Tammy Mills, this is the morning edition. Thanks for listening.