Where the wild things are: The danger that can’t be tamed on K’gari
A young boy was mauled to death by dingoes in 2001. Strategies to manage the island’s native predators have shifted drastically in the years since, but millions of tourists are still at risk.
Dingoes are wild animals, comparable to wolves or coyotes. But which is harder to control, their behaviour or ours?Credit: Kaihla McConnell
Golden hour arrives on the western side of K’gari.
Tourists shuffle along a long wooden boat ramp on the island formerly known as Fraser Island, the backs of their hands raised to ward off the afternoon sun.
Beyond the ramp lies Kingfisher Resort. Wild and sprawling as it appears, the hotel is bordered by dingo exclusion fencing. To enter the beach, guests must pass through gates, each fitted with a warning sign: “DANGER. Aggressive dingo behaviour towards people has occurred in this area”.
Those leaving the protected zone are encouraged to take a “safety stick”.
A pair stop to choose their sticks from a hollowed tree stump. One takes a length of bamboo, the other a piece of rubber.
Dingo warning signs at the entry to the beach out the front of Kingfisher Resort on K’gari.Credit: Courtney Kruk
They head south. After an hour, as the beach turns hard with rock and mangrove shoots, they turn back. A shape appears on the horizon, its tawny coat barely visible against the glare.
The lone dingo tracks towards the couple, its snout caught between a scent on the breeze and the sand. When it notices the people it changes course, sauntering up into the steep white dunes.
It waits for the pair to pass, peering out from the foliage as they take a cautious wide berth. Only once they’ve passed does it slip back onto the beach, padding gingerly into the fading dusk.
The passersby – human and dingo – glance back briefly, ensuring the other is sticking to an opposite course.
A lone dingo waits for a pair of visitors to pass before continuing its journey along the beach. Credit: Courtney Kruk
Back at the gate, a British tourist smiles apprehensively. “Are those sticks for the ding-goes?”
Thirty years ago, measures to separate humans and dingoes – or wongari as they are known to the island’s traditional owners, the Butchulla people – would have been viewed as excessive by residents and seasoned visitors. Dingoes were a risk, but not a serious danger.
That changed in 2001.
On April 30, nine-year-old Brisbane boy Clinton Gage was fatally mauled by two dingoes while holidaying on the island with his family.
At the time of the attack, Clinton was walking with another young boy near their campground at Waddy Point, on the northern end of the 126-kilometre World Heritage-listed island. His father, Ross, and brother, Dylan, rushed to his aid, Dylan suffering bites while trying to fend the dingoes off. Clinton could not be saved.
A clipping from the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper showing Clinton’s uncle, Kelvin Gage, days after his nephew’s death in 2001. Credit: Sydney Morning Herald
Then-premier Peter Beattie responded swiftly. Fearing the impact on the region’s tourism industry, he ordered an immediate cull of the island’s dingoes. In the month following Clinton’s death, 31 dingoes were destroyed by Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service rangers.
Strategies to protect humans and dingoes have shifted drastically in the 24 years since.
Human activity is now closely scrutinised and there are measures to keep contact minimal. Conservation of dingoes is upheld, and they are destroyed as a last resort.
But attacks on the island have continued, with more high-risk incidents in recent years. The latest, involving three tourists bitten at Lake Wabby, was days out from the Easter school holidays, one of the busiest periods for the island. There have been 31 negative interactions and high-risk incidents between dingoes and humans so far in 2025.
Decades of research, government funding and management have been unable to conclusively answer one question: how do we stop dingo attacks on an island that attracts nearly half a million visitors each year?
“If we don’t talk now, it won’t happen, it’s just going to get busier and busier.”
Senior ranger Dr Linda Behrendorff doesn’t have much time to spare. It’s three days out from the start of the Easter long weekend, a period that will see the island inundated with visitors. But it’s high tide and her staff have been delayed, so she has a brief window.
Behrendorff has been involved in wildlife management on K’gari for more than two decades, and was on the island when Clinton died. “Everything changed from that moment,” she says.
“It proved that a fatal dingo attack can happen … and our job became to prevent this from happening again. I say to my staff, ‘I never want to relive that, or anything that happened around that time, again’.”
So far, she hasn’t.
But more than 600 interactions and high-risk incidents involving people and dingoes were recorded between 2020 and 2024.
“Whether you’re in Africa, you’re here [on K’gari], you’re in America with bears and wolves, wherever you’ve got humans and wildlife together without separation, you are potentially going to have some form of interaction,” Behrendorff says.
“Our job is to ensure that where the human and wildlife meet, we have put everything in place that we can in order to mitigate the risk as much as we can; signage, sticks, fences in some areas, rangers patrolling.
“We talk about knowing your risk, and understanding what to do when you visit.”
Exactly why dingoes attack is inconclusive, and often circumstantial. Certain factors such as their age, sex, and the season, can be influential. During dingo breeding season, roughly the same time as the Easter holidays, the animals test their dominance and protect their territories.
Then there’s human factors. Dingo attacks often involve small children, at times unattended. While there are warning signs plastered across the island, people frequently disregard advice to walk in groups or carry dingo sticks. Holidaymakers, caught up in paradise, become complacent, leaving food or forgetting to manage their waste.
And there are more overt instances of disregard.
Despite being an offence, people continue to feed dingoes and approach them. According to the Department of Environment and Tourism, dingoes only need to be fed or find scraps once to form an association.
Despite attracting hefty penalties, visitors to K’gari are still documented breaking rules, including approaching and feeding dingoes.
“It starts with familiarity,” Behrendorff says. “The more familiar they become, then they lose their natural fear and can become more dominant.”
Ecologist Rob Appleby was part of a research group commissioned to identify ways to reduce the risk to human safety after Clinton’s death.
“I think for a lot of people, they just look like dogs, right?” he says.
“But if they ever saw what they’re capable of in terms of predation, they would probably have a more healthy respect [for dingoes].”
Dingoes are descended from south Asian wolves and were introduced to Australia thousands of years ago. They’re the largest terrestrial carnivore in the country and while they typically hunt for prey, either alone or in small packs, they are opportunistic, and will scavenge from humans.
A sign at the entrance to Lake McKenzie, one of the most popular tourist spots on K’gari. Credit: Courtney Kruk
A curious thing happened during COVID. With reduced visitors to the island, dingo behaviour changed.
“People weren’t seeing them,” Appleby says. “They ended up having to spend a lot more time in the bush chasing live prey and doing what they were probably doing for thousands of years before a bunch of tourists got there and made their life both harder in some ways and easier.”
An estimated 400,000 people visit K’gari each year. In 2024, the former Labor state government endorsed a recommendation to cap visitor numbers on the 20 busiest days of the year. The LNP dismissed the suggestion.
“The Crisafulli government is determined that our wonderful natural areas like K’gari/Fraser Island are open and accessible to all,” Minister for the Environment and Tourism Andrew Powell says.
Ranger and Community Engagement Officer at Butchulla Aboriginal Corporation (BAC) Tessa Waia works closely with park rangers, including Behrendorff, to investigate and mitigate dingo incidents.
She doesn’t want people to stop enjoying K’gari – “it’s one of our laws, if you have plenty, you must share” – but says restrictions on visitor numbers would reduce negative interactions between humans and dingoes.
“We believe they need to shut the island down for periods,” Waia says, “so that country can heal itself.”
Dingoes are culturally significant to the Butchulla people. Before European settlement, there were two types of dingo on the island: wat’dha (the camp dingo) and wongari (the wild dingo).
“The wat’dha used to protect the tribes or their clans from the wongari and bad spirits that would come to the camp.
“But when they removed all the Butchulla people from K’gari … they had no apex predator.”
Restoring balance, Waia says, is part of the solution. “We’ve got to bring back that order again or that old system that wongari can understand … showing them that we was the apex predator.”
Dingoes are wild animals, comparable to wolves or coyotes. But which is harder to control, their behaviour or ours?
“Dingoes we can manage,” Behrendorff says. “They’re consistent in what they do. You’ll always get your outliers, or the ones that are more bold than others.
“But when we are actually down to managing in the dingo space, it’s a handful of high-risk wongari.
“When you’re dealing with half a million visitors that all come with their expectations and their own spectrum of ideas and opinions ... that’s harder to deal with.”
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