Tag: dingo

This is not a quoll. It is a dingo, the largest species of predator in Australia not counting human beings.

People insist that Australia’s nature makes it a horribly dangerous place but it’s easy to forget that our largest natural predator is dog-sized, not bear-sized or cougar-sized or lion-sized or tiger-sized. Sure we have a lot of incredibly poisonous snakes and a couple of really nasty spiders and even the odd drop bear, but at least i can go bushwalking without the fear of being eaten.

Though i suppose being kicked to death by a feisty male kangaroo in the middle of nowhere is no good either.

This is not a quoll. This is a dingo. Dingos like high places.

This is not a quoll. It is Dusty the dingo from West Australian Reptile Park, where the next batch of photos were taken. WA Reptile Park is a small family-run operation in the Swan Valley, east of Perth.

Anyway, dingos. Here’s an interesting tale about dingos that was related to me by one of the owners of the park right outside the dingo pen.

Before Azaria Chamberlain was famously taken by a dingo near Uluru, local operators apparently used to allow the dingoes onto the tourist buses – dingos are fairly bold and sociable. They were even feeding them, possibly to keep them around as a tourist attraction. Shortly before Azaria was taken in 1980, the tourism operators stopped feeding the dingos and letting them onto the tourist buses to meet people, probably because it was kind of dangerous and somewhat reckless thing to be doing. These were still wild animals and dingos can always be a touch unpredictable.

Suddenly, the dingos around Uluru were missing out on their previous food source while being completely unafraid of human beings – probably not the best time to go camping there in hindsight. Thus unfolded the tragic story of the Chamberlains, who were only officially acquitted of the murder charge earlier this year (2012).

Something to keep in mind if you ever go camping on Fraser Island.

Incidentally, because “dingo” is a relatively recent addition to English, you can pluralise it as either dingos or dingoes. I think it looks nicer without the e.

Quolls have never stolen and eaten babies from around Uluru because they became locally extinct before tourism became a thing there, but the chuditch (known there as tjilpa and kuninka) is still an important animal in traditional local lore across multiple indigenous nations in Central Australia.