Australia's call of the wild draws careless visitor hordes

First there were dingoes, then tourists. BILLY ADAMS tells why the two do not mix.

FRASER ISLAND - The Aborigines believe it to be a beautiful woman. Her eyes are the piercing lakes which mirror the blue sky, the wildlife a source of companionship to stop her becoming lonely.

Magical barely begins to describe Fraser Island, a tropical paradise which glides alongside the east coast of Australia, about 260km north of Brisbane.

Fraser's seemingly endless beach doubles as a highway for four-wheel-drive vehicles which roar along the sand at more than 100km/h, overtake and sometimes crash into each other.

Like so many other places of beauty before it, Fraser is struggling to cope with consequences of an increasing number of visitors lured by the notion of a wilderness barely scarred by human hands.

Nowadays, the island has more than 300,000 visitors every year. The resulting management issues concentrate the minds of conservationists trying to protect a place already afforded world heritage status.

No issue provokes more debate today than the population of wild dingoes which have roamed the place for 5000 years and are said to be the purest breed anywhere.

The experts have long feared the consequences of largely ignorant holidaymakers sharing the same space as packs of wild dogs.

And last May their worst fears were confirmed when two dingoes attacked a nine-year-old boy and mauled him to death.

Clinton Gage was walking on a track with his younger brother, Ross, 7, when two dingoes appeared from the bush.

The boys fled, but Clinton tripped. As Ross ran for help, the dingoes set about his brother.

Ross was attacked when he returned to the scene with his father, Kelvin. The wounds he sustained to the back and legs required hospital treatment.

Almost one year after the tragedy I made my first trip to the island.

In that time debate has raged over the death, and there is a broad consensus on why the boy was killed. The dingoes on Fraser have lost their natural fear of humans because the humans insist on feeding them and taking photographs. In the eyes of the dingo, small children and babies have become easy prey.

"I used to come here camping with my family when I was a child and there were virtually no tourists," says one of the island's rangers. "At that time there was almost no contact between the humans and the dingoes. They never came near the campsite.

"The humans who feed the dingoes are to blame for that little boy's death. Not the dingoes.

"It makes me so angry that so many have been killed as a result. You'll find most people who know this island feel the same way."

Most travellers go to Fraser on trips organised by tour companies in the nearest mainland town, Hervey Bay.

Before leaving for a three-day excursion my group was shown a video warning that dingoes are wild animals and should not be fed or photographed. But there was no mention of the tragedy or the hundreds of minor attacks reported to take place on Fraser every year.

I also picked up a leaflet for Kingfisher Bay Wilderness Adventure Tours: the cover showed a dingo wearing a fedora, sunglasses, hiking boots and with a camera dangling round its neck. A disclaimer in small print at the foot of the page said: "Dingoes are wild animals - please do not feed or interact with them."

It is not hard to see why many travellers fail to appreciate the potential dangers. Etay, an Israeli in my group, shook his head in disbelief when told that dingoes could kill. "No way," he protests, "they are so small, so skinny. It would be easy to frighten them off. They are just like pet dogs."

Despite the threat of fines for interacting with dingoes, which were doubled to $A3000 ($3632) after the tragedy, people have long fed, gestured to and even posed for photographs with the dogs that converge on campsites looking for their next meal.

Leading conservationist John Sinclair said the dingoes were wary of, and have avoided humans since they first appeared on the island 5000 years ago. Only in the last couple of decades had they become bold, brazen, aggressive.

"I heard of one story where a woman put some food in her mouth, hopped down on her hands and knees and begged the dingo to take it from her lips," he said.

Members of my group typified the ignorance faced by the rangers.

With little camping experience or local knowledge between us, six city-dwelling strangers were let loose in the middle of nowhere with a basic map and no supervision.

Our tour guide said before bidding us good luck: "The inland speed limit is 35km/h but you'll find that you rarely reach that speed."

He was right. But we rarely got down to 35km/h.

With Etay, a professional motocross rider, at the wheel, the rainforest rushed past as the speedometer needle sat around a terrifying 60km/h.

The rangers believe people are finally taking heed of warnings not to feed the dingoes. During my stay I neither saw nor heard of anyone giving the dogs food.

But there are still many "unconfirmed reports" and a chronic lack of awareness.

The dingoes on Fraser Island are said to have adopted the same behavioural traits as those exhibited by bears in some American reserves.

They lurk at the fringes of campsites, rifling through food scraps after the humans go to bed.

They have become adept at opening containers and bags, even ripping into closed tents.

For the three days I was on Fraser it rained almost non-stop. My tent - an ugly brown army issue that probably saw its best days in Vietnam - leaked. I spent two nights sleeping in a puddle with rain splashing on my face.

But it was a wondrous experience. Which was better? Swimming in the breathtaking blue waters of Lake McKenzie or among Lake Wabby's catfish? Breathing in the delicious scent of a eucalypt forest or trekking across magnificent fields of sand?

As luck had it, the dingoes kept their distance. On the beach two stared at us in seeming bewilderment as Etay raced past on his way to setting a new land speed record.

Another checked us out more than 100m away on one of the dunes. But none came to the two campsites where we spent the night.

As we enjoyed a fine barbecue at the Central Station camp on the first evening a figure emerged from the darkness. It was a ranger, armed with a slingshot to be used against dingoes which came too close. He seemed genuinely perplexed by the lack of activity.

About 30 of the island's "habituated" dingoes - those which had lost their fear of humans - were shot after Clinton Gage's death. At least two more have been killed since. There have been calls for a total cull of a population which peaks around 200.

That horrifies conservationists like Sinclair, an active member of the Fraser Island Defenders Organisation.

"The purest breed of Australian dingo is being reduced to dangerously low levels," he said. "They simply may not be sustainable if this goes on."

He blamed the Queensland Government for overreacting to the public outcry that followed the attack.

"It was a very unfortunate attack," he said. "Some people think the kid was ripped limb from limb but the fact is an artery was punctured and he died as a result of that."

The dingo debate is just one of a host of problems facing Fraser, all seemingly caused by the rising number of tourists.

"They just can't continue the way they are," adds Sinclair. "For every visitor to Fraser Island in the last three years, one tonne of sand has been displaced into the lakes and other areas. You just can't do that kind of thing to a world heritage site."

Solutions to the dingo problem have ranged from a cull to erecting fences round the campsites. Sinclair supports the implementation of a management strategy aimed at making dingoes once again wary of the human incomers.

Ian Moore, an English tourist to Fraser, offered a more radical solution.

"I would eradicate every human from the island. Back to the way it was.

"Humans always go into a place, think they are more important and everything else loses out at their expense. And that's what happening to the dingoes on Fraser."