Man vs Wild dingoes equals an unhappy camper
by Mark Rothfield on 8 Feb 2012
I received a mixed reaction last week to a newspaper article I wrote after a dingo stalked my 'baby' during a boating/camping holiday.
Admittedly it was the Myall Lakes on Australia's east coast and not Ayers Rock, my daughter is 13 and 50+ kilograms, and it was a scrawny looking dingo.
But it was a worry nevertheless.
My daughter was slouched low in a camp chair, facing the water and focusing on her iPod (kids!) when someone noticed the dingo sneaking up behind her. They shooed it away.
A fellow camper told us how he’d been bailed up by a pack of dingoes at a nearby beach. 'Five of them formed a circle around me and started closing in,' the bloke said. 'I was the only one of the beach and had to run into the water and get on my boat.'
Three of the beggars were loitering around our tent sites, ravenous as Pavlov’s dogs. Signs simply warn you to maintain eye contact and slowly back away...
Should a dingo stalk one of my kids again, I’d use a rock to maintain contact with its eyes, or a big stick. I reckon the camping area should be either fenced or the dogs relocated.
One reader told me to shove my tent elsewhere – or words to that effect - but I'd be interested to know what fellow boaties think.
Boats take campers to places that cars don’t reach, places where wild things are. But when it’s a dedicated national park camping area, and you’re paying money to camp there, shouldn’t you reasonably expect a level of safety for your family?
The alternative is to wait until another kid is attacked then the dingoes are culled … as per Fraser Island.
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