Demonising the Dingo Yet Again.
By Jennifer Parkhurst
On the 40th anniversary of Azaria Chamberlain’s death, and being agnostic about it for all these years, I can’t help but ask myself: Did Lindy do it or was it a dingo?
And also: Is there a third option?
In 2012, the final Inquest into the death of Azaria Chamberlain took place, and Lindy was exonerated, in part, by new evidence from the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS) under the banner of the Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) which ‘proved’ dingoes were ‘dangerous’ and capable of killing a person. This evidence from the QPWS comprised incident reports of alleged attacks by dingoes against people on Fraser Island. Most of these reports I had seen through Right to Information legislation, obtained by myself and then by Save Fraser Island Dingoes (SFID). Me, SFID, and the National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program (NDPRP) sent long and detailed submissions to the Coroner, outlining why some of the QPWS incident reports were not in fact evidence of aggression by dingoes but rather misconstrued play behaviour. (If any readers wish to view any of the RTI reports that SFID holds in its office, you are more than welcome.)
Our submissions covered subjects such as a critique of the habituation = aggression hypothesis, and what we believed to be misconceived aspirations within the Fraser Island Dingo Management Strategy (FIDMS). We postulated that the reports did not prove that dingoes were inherently dangerous to people, and that the reports should therefore not be considered ‘new evidence’.
Dr Ernest Healy wrote on behalf of the NDPRP: ‘The National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program considers that DERM’s understanding and definition of dingo aggression and, therefore, its recording of incidents of dingo aggression towards humans has been seriously flawed. We submit that DERM’s records of dingo aggression on Fraser Island do not provide an accurate indication of the propensity for dingoes to be aggressive towards humans. These records of dingo aggression reflect the mistaken assumptions about dingo behaviour which, unfortunately, underpin the Fraser Island dingo management policy (and about which the Queensland authorities have been constantly criticised), rather than any actual propensity for dingoes to pose a risk to humans.’
He continued: ‘ The unreliability of the records derives from the fact that DERM has applied a ridiculously loose standard in labelling contact between dingoes and humans on Fraser Island as ‘attacks’ or as ‘dangerous’. The Department has applied a no-tolerance approach to dingo-human contact, whereby virtually any contact at all may be labelled as ‘aggression’ on the part of the dingo. DERM has persisted with categorizing the most trivial forms of contact as aggressive, for which large numbers of high-conservation-value dingoes have been destroyed.’
From the time of the tragic death of 9 year-old Clinton Gage on 30 April 2001, the approach to dingo management on Fraser Island has been governed by the above mentioned overriding assumption that dingoes are dangerous. To help justify this management perspective, the management strategy has made an unconvincing attempt to portray a long history of problems with dingo aggression on Fraser Island. A reported attack in 1988; a reported ‘problem’ with dingoes in a local newspaper report around 1930; and dingoes taking food from forestry worker camps in the 1960s, is presented as evidence of a long-standing dingo problem on the Island (FIDMS, 2006: 11).
Our pleas for the QPWS ‘evidence’ to be put aside were ignored, and Coroner Elizabeth Morris found that:
‘Evidence tendered at this Inquest includes reports of attacks by dingoes and dogs assumed to be part dingo or cross breeds. Reports from 1986 through to June 2010 include cases of both children and adults being attacked. In Queensland a 9 year old boy died as a result of an attack by dingoes on Fraser Island... In New South Wales a 2 year old girl died in December 2005 from blood loss and shock from cranio-cervical injury from dog attack, being a part dingo crossbreed. In Victoria in February 2006 a 22 month old girl died of chronic respiratory failure with contributing factors of blood loss from dog bites (the dog being described as a dingo/Labrador cross). Apart from these deaths, there were reports of various attacks and injuries, including records obtained from the Department of Environment and Resource Management in Queensland, regarding reported dingo incidents on Fraser Island.’
I believe blaming dingo hybrids for the above attacks on children seems irrelevant when compared with the thousands of domestic dog attacks each year. She went on:
‘In considering now all of the evidence, I am satisfied that … what occurred on 17 August 1980 was that shortly after Mrs Chamberlain placed Azaria in the tent, a dingo or dingoes entered the tent, took Azaria and carried and dragged her from the immediate area. Mrs Chamberlain, upon being alerted to Azaria’s cry, returned to the tent area to see a dingo near the tent. Raising a cry which alerted others, Mrs Chamberlain then ran for a short distance after the dingo and then back to the tent, confirming that Azaria was missing.’
In other words, a dingo took Azaria and that was the end of that.
Since then, science has proven what we already knew: that dingoes are not inherently dangerous and the incidents on Fraser Island are not as serious as they are purported to be.’ Our results also clearly show that dingoes rarely seriously injure even the most vulnerable of people, despite the opportunity to do so arising on occasion. Nor do they regularly seriously injure people more generally. In fact, large numbers of encounters, which are probably benign or positive in nature, go unreported.’ (Human–dingo interactions on Fraser Island: an analysis of serious incident reports Rob Appleby, Jess Mackie, Bradley Smith, Lilia Bernede and Darryl Jones. Australian Mammalogy http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/AM16026.
There was other evidence besides what QPWS presented: the hair found in the tent was not cat hair but dingo or dog hair. This evidence was irrefutable, and brought to the fore by forensic scientist Hans Brunner (a personal friend of mine). I don’t doubt Hans found canine hair, but rather than speculate that the dingo hair was in the tent because a dingo had entered it, I imagine that there would have been dingo hair everywhere in that camp ground, due to the high presence of dingoes in the area.
An earlier Royal Commission found that: ‘Before August 1980 dingoes in the Ayers Rock area frequented the camping area. At that time there were many dingoes in the area, some 18-25 of which were known to visit the camping area. A number of attacks were made by dingoes on children in the months preceding Azaria’s disappearance. In none of these did any child suffer serious injury… It would have been very difficult for a dingo to have removed Azaria from her clothing without causing more damage than was observed on it…. I think it is likely that a dingo would have left the clothing more scattered…’ (His Honour Justice Nader, in Re Conviction of Chamberlains, Commission of Inquiry into Chamberlain Convictions, Report, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers (1987), volume 15, paper 192)
The finding of the Matinee jacket proved Lindy’s innocence because it apparently revealed why there had been no canine saliva found on Azaria’s jumpsuit. But the question remains – how did the dingo get the matinee jacket off the baby without damaging it at all, and why was it found so far away from her other clothes? Further, why was there no blood found on her nappy? Dingoes love to eat excrement, would have ripped the nappy to shreds trying to eat it all. Dingoes are clever, but are they clever enough to remove a nappy intact?
There was a dingo’s den about 30 metres from the place the clothing was found. I suspect that the 17th of August would have been late in the whelping season and the den may not have been in use.
If dingoes had taken the baby, there would be evidence of bones found somewhere near the site. Dingoes are not adept at hiding every bone they gather, and in my experience, carcasses may be left lying around for quite some time before they are devoured. I would have thought that bone fragments, the smell of decay, evidence of blood and scattered pieces of clothing and remains, would have been found near that alleged dingo’s den. But no such thing was ever found, near the dingo’s den or anywhere at all.
A recent channel 7 documentary showed a dingo with its jaws being held open, and the life-size head of a baby inside those jaws. It looked possible for the dingo to have been capable of grabbing the baby by the head, but it looked very awkward and unlikely that the dingo would easily have carried the baby outside the tent without anyone hearing anything or without making a heck of a mess.
Irrespective of Coroner Elizabeth Morris’s findings, the question remains as far as I’m concerned: did a dingo really take Azaria Chamberlain? Are dingoes inherently dangerous to humans? I believe it is possible but not probable.
On the side of possibility…
The feeding of dingoes was ceased three weeks before the disappearance of Azaria at Uluru, and one of the last foraging places for dingoes, the Orchid Beach dump, was closed three weeks before the death of Clinton Gage on Fraser Island, which I feel shows there was a management problem, rather than a dingo problem, in both areas. If a dingo did take Azaria Chamberlain, then I believe it was due to food stress, rather than any inherent aggressive nature of a dingo or dingoes.
I’m not convinced Lindy did it either. Perhaps there is a third option, who knows? But it is time we stopped demonising the dingo for playing out its vital role in our ecosystem as apex predator. Like it or not dingoes kill their prey, and if we enter their territory there is always risk involved, just like swimming in the ocean with sharks, and indeed, even like playing with the family dog.
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