Plenty of dingo-free campsites but the dingoes have no choice

SELFISH campers are helping exterminate the Australian native dog, wrecking the environment wherever they go, especially on Fraser Island.

ENDANGERED: A Fraser Island dingo

THERE is a very simple solution to the problems, many hugely exaggerated, of camper-dingo interactions on Fraser Island (or K’Gari, its Aboriginal name, meaning Paradise).

And despite all the dingo demonisation we regularly see on the island, some simple facts are almost always overlooked.

Dingoes are easy to demonise because of the deaths of Azaria Chamberlain at Uluru and Clinton gage at K’Gari.

These became sensational news worldwide, because no such thing had ever happened before.

Children have been killed by domestic dogs and still are, every year, but there have only been two deaths in 200 years from dingo attack, anywhere.

We could say thousands of years, because Aboriginal people lived with them, left them to guard children and fed them, without any history or anecdotes of any child being attacked.

The most dangerous thing about visiting K’Gari is still getting there and driving around.

Vehicles cause way more casualties.

Tobogganing down the sand dunes causes more serious injuries, much more often.

Sadly, figures show children are sometimes in greater danger from their parents.

If you are concerned about possible dingo interactions when you camp on K’Gari, here is a simple solution - camp somewhere else.

K’Gari is their place, one of the few places wild dingoes have left.

Humans can have dingo-free camping throughout the rest ofthe Great Sandy Region from Noosa North Shore to Inskip Point - exactly the same country geologically and aesthetically.

The dingoes have nowhere else to go.

You do.

Originally published as Plenty of dingo-free campsites but the dingoes have no choice