Killer dogs on rampage near Alice Springs

The bush near Alice Springs has become dangerous due to packs of roaming wild dogs. Photo / Getty Images

CANBERRA - Packs of wild dogs rampaging through Aboriginal town camps on the fringes of Alice Springs have killed and mauled men, women and children.

The maulings - two of which are the subject of an inquest that opened this week - follow earlier attacks in remote, drought-stricken areas of Australia and follow warnings that wild dogs are becoming larger and more vicious.

Research is showing that their prey is switching from smaller game to large animals such as cattle - and now humans.

Many are hybrids of dingoes and domestic dogs gone feral, producing crossbreeds up to 20 per cent heavier than previous average weights, and of such a threat that a national strategy was launched this year to control them.

In Hidden Valley, one of the squalid town camps that have now been embraced in a A$125 million ($145 million) federal plan to haul similar communities out of poverty, dogs have become a lethal threat.

In Alice Springs, Coroner Greg Cavanagh has been told the gruesome details of the deaths of two men within three weeks at Hidden Valley, both partially eaten by packs that live in the surrounding countryside.

South Australian disability pensioner Michael Hardy, 27, died first, after stopping at Hidden Valley on his way back to Adelaide after visiting a brother in Darwin.

His body, described at the time as a "bloody mess", was found near the entrance to the camp in July last year.

Counsel assisting the coroner, Jodi Truman, told the inquest Hardy had apparently been drunk when attacked, and had fallen backwards, striking his head.

"Thereafter, Mr Hardy sustained wounds and injuries as a result of the dog attack to his neck, which were severe and were in keeping with a dog attacking Mr Hardy's throat with sufficient force to cause respiratory obstruction and asphyxial death," she said.

Detective Sergeant Leith Phillips described the scene as gruesome: "I've never seen anything like it."

Three weeks later James Roman, 48, suffered an apparent heart attack at Hidden Valley. His body was mauled by dogs.

Hardy and Roman were not the first victims. Ranger Clem Wheatley said he had told the Alice Springs Town Council and Tangentyere Council, the indigenous body controlling the town camps, of the dog problem since 2001. A year later he had warned that if immediate action was not taken people would die.

Since then there have been two deaths - other than Hardy and Roman - and a number of serious attacks.

In 2005 the body of a woman killed by dogs was found in a pool of blood at another camp known as Trucking Yard, and dogs had partially eaten the body of a man who had drowned in his own vomit after falling unconscious.

Last year a woman was attacked after she fell over, losing an ear and part of her face. In other cases a man's scrotum was seriously damaged, and a seven-year-old boy was dragged from his bicycle at the Tangentyere camp and bitten deeply on the arms, legs, shoulders and back.

Last year officials began cracking down in the camps, where homes had as many as seven or eight dogs, culling animals, restricting numbers to two per household, and forcing registration in a drive to control the threat.

But Truman told the inquest that it was possible that such sweeps faded after the immediate threat lessened.

Coroner Cavanagh, who will determine if any failure by the councils had contributed to the deaths of Hardy and Roman, said: "It's unacceptable that in the 21st century in an Australian town ... packs of dogs roam the streets, biting, mauling and eating parts of citizens."