From My Cyberjournal 52 December 2004

Dingo! What comes to mind is that Hollywood movie "Evil Angels", starring Meryl Streep, about an infamous incident in a tourist camp near Ayers Rock in 1980, when a dingo broke inside a tent and made off with a 9 week old baby in its mouth. In 2001, two dingoes attacked two children walking on Fraser island, killing a 9-year old boy who had stumbled and fallen while fleeing. Early Indo-Malays may have brought the dingo to Australia about 4,000 years ago. It has taken to this continent so well, the government had to erect an 8,000 kilometer fence between New South Wales and Queensland to protect sheep from dingoes.

Fraser Island dingoes are said to be among the purest bred. About 200 roam the island. After the Fraser island incident, those dingoes who had lost their fear of humans, foraging for food around Fraser Island's camp sites, were shot. In our earlier sojourns to Fraser Island, dingoes were common sights, mingling with humans and making off with shoes and clothes left lying about. Once, at the beach, a dingo nearly took a good taste of tiny grandson Alex's leg, had his Mom, Grace, not quickly picked him up and swung him away from the lunging canine. Before 2001, packs of dingoes mingled with tourist bathers at McKenzie Lake. Not in these last three years. A dingo sighting has become an unusual event.

Imagine my surprise this time, when one early morning while photographing the sunrise reflected on the wet beach, to see in my camera rangefinder a dingo looking straight at me in the distance. What a picture! Though it was early morn, the moon was visibly reflected on the mirror-like water on the sand. I tripped the shutter.

The dingo then sauntered to my left, my camera followed it's movements. I was focusing for a second shot when I noticed it had started coming towards me at full gallop! Hastily snapping the photo, I removed the camera off my neck and swung the rather clumsy weapon in the air to fend it off. It backed off and moved back to the center, and I took another hurried shot. Now it circled to my right, plunging through ankle deep water to stalk me from behind. That was my last dingo shot, as I devoted the rest of the time in full retreat, walking as fast I could back to the house. Occasionally I would glance back and catch it still dogging me, pausing only whenever I stopped to face it.

At the beach's edge, a heavy-set man with a camera hanging from his neck stood near the shrubs. He probably had witnessed it all, but had remained impassive. As I walked briskly past him, he drew himself to his full height, folded his arms, and in his sternest voice addressed the advancing animal "Stay!". Good luck to you, I thought. Next instant he was keeping pace beside me, while instructing me "Don't run!" "Did you get any photos?" I asked him. "Don't run!" was all he could say nervously. "Read the signs!"

Yeah. The signs say you should stand your full height, fold your arms and stare down a dingo. A lot of good that did him. He was just as scared as I was, only I wasn't giving him lectures. The fact that we were now two, probably discouraged the dingo. I turned into the entrance of the cluster of resort houses on the waters edge where we stayed, while the heroic man who spouted lectures about dingo control continued farther down the road as fast as he could.

No more solitary early sunrise walks for me! My camera's digital data recorded the first shot on 1 Oct at 5:43 AM and 5:44 AM for the subsequent three shots, so it all happened within a minute. As you can see the last shots were a touch blurred as I had no time to adjust the speed of my camera. You will appreciate that there was some camera shake too!