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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Joe Hinchliffe

Canadian backpacker’s death poses question for Queensland’s K’gari: can dingoes and tourists coexist?

A dingo is sitting on the beach, a 4WD can be seen in the background
Some tourists on K’gari deliberately feed dingoes to coax them in for selfies. Photograph: Nicky Dowling/Getty Images

In the early hours of Monday morning, a young woman’s body was found being mauled by a pack of dingoes near a shipwreck on a windswept stretch of white sand beach on an island off the east coast of Australia.

The island was K’gari, formerly known as Fraser Island, in southern Queensland, home to about 150 human inhabitants and a population of dingoes genetically distinct from those on the mainland. Called wongari in the language of its Butchulla traditional owners, the lean yellow and white canids are sacred to the First People and indelibly entwined in the cultural fabric of this world-heritage listed sand island.

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