Photo Friday: Fraser Island Dingo

Travel photo blog post fraser island dingo

We went to Fraser Island last year: a world heritage sand island and national park about 200 kilometres (12o miles) north of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia.

It’s only an hour from my home and the kind of place I imagined we’d visit all the time. But four years slipped before we made it there.

Fraser Island is most famous for being home to the purest wild dingoes in Australia. That’s because it’s an island, and where mainland dingo bloodlines have been mixed with house dogs, Fraser Island dingoes have been isolated.

It’s brilliant to see dingoes roaming wild on Fraser Island but there are problems. The dingoes get a lot of bad press because they’ve bitten or even killed humans in the past. But all they’re doing is trying to feed themselves, protect their pups and survive in a place that is increasingly over run with humans.

Fraser Island’s a haven for fishermen and off-road 4WD fans who zoom up and down the beach constantly. That’s what we did too because there aren’t any roads.

So it is with travel: we humans go to see the natural beauty and enjoy the wildlife but we end up threatening it.

It’s one of the problems with travel but one I’m hoping can be solved if we travellers spend as much time learning about and caring for the places we visit as we do planning our trips.

I hope you get to see a dingo in the wild one day and if you do, remember that you are more of a threat to them than they to you.

fraser-island-dingo-photo

Would you like to see a wild dingo? Or maybe you already have? Was that on Fraser Island or somewhere else in Australia? 

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2 Comments

  1. eduardo buenagua February 23, 2013 at 10:13 am - Reply

    Hi Annabel,

    Just to let you know I’m following. I have not much to say, of course, except that to preserve these dingoes, I think what the Australian authorities would do is just leave Fraser Island to the dingoes and resettle those humans, who are increasingly over running them, somewhere else as they are an ever constant threat to them, too. Australia is a big country, they could do that easy, for sure! And of course, the authorities should not forget to give warnings or reminders written in big boards placed in strategic mounds to be read fully by anybody going that area for whatever reasons, that reads: DON’T MESS UP WITH THE DINGOES! THEY’LL EAT YOU!!!

    I don’t know if that’s sensible enough but that’s all I can say, for now.

    Thanks,

    Eduardo

    • Annabel Candy February 24, 2013 at 9:06 pm - Reply

      Hi Eduardo,

      Lol, I like your ideas! It’s that fine balance between attracting tourists who boost the economy and protecting the environment and wildlife. I hope they can get it right on Fraser Island :)

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