A nine-year-old boy died and his seven-year old friend was injured during an attack by dingoes on a remote Australian island. The boys from Brisbane had been camping with their respective parents at a popular fishing spot on the northern tip of Fraser Island off the southern Queensland state coast.
The pair wandered off for a walk when the wild dogs started to follow them. They both started to run back to the campsite but the dingoes pounced on the older boy. The younger boy sustained injuries to his arms and legs after being chased and savaged, but managed to escape and raise the alarm. He was taken to a hospital on the mainland by helicopter. When the nine-year-old's father returned to the spot, accompanied by his six-year-old son, he found his other son dead. The six-year-old tried to run back to the camp but the dingoes attacked again. The dogs were scared away and the boy was also brought to hospital, having suffered multiple bites.
A male and a female dingo have both been destroyed, and a forensic examination will be conducted on the animals. Police have sealed off the island to prevent television cameramen and photographers from gaining access to the scene before investigations had finished. Locals blamed international tourists who want to photograph the dingoes for feeding scraps to the dogs. "They are supposed to be regarded as wild animals but the backpackers, as much as they have been told to leave the dingoes alone, keep on feeding them," Cathedral Beach Resort owner Norma Hannant said. Up to 20 people have been attacked by dingoes on the island in the past six years.
Dingoes were at the centre of one of Australia's most controversial trials when Lindy Chamberlain was convicted of murdering her nine week-old daughter in 1980. It took her eight years to prove her innocence and that baby Azaria had been taken by a dingo from a campsite near Ayers Rock. The trial was the subject of the film, A Cry in the Dark, which starred Meryl Streep and Sam Neill.
