A 19-year-old Canadian woman found dead on the beach on a popular tourist island off the Queensland coast on Monday morning was discovered surrounded by a pack of dingoes.
But despite confirming her body had been “touched and interfered with” by the wild canids on K’gari (formerly known as Fraser Island), police say they will await a postmortem before speculating as to the cause of her death.
Wide Bay Burnett District Patrol Insp Paul Algie told reporters Monday afternoon that the young woman had been working at a backpacker hostel on the eastern beaches.
She left the hostel at about 5am on Monday morning, telling colleagues she was going for a swim on her own. Her next known sighting was at between 6am and 6:15am on the beach north of the Maheno shipwreck.
“Two male persons had been driving south from up near Orchard beach and [had] seen a large pack of dingoes – approximately 10 dingoes – near an object and, upon closer inspection, saw that it was in fact a female person,” he said.
“It was obviously a very traumatic and horrific scene for them to uncover”.
Insp Algie said that police took statements from witnesses and “people that knew her movements”, to shed light on what occurred in the 75-minute-window from 5am.
“So there was an hour, to hour and 15 minutes, that police are currently piecing together as a part of their investigations,” he said.
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The police officer acknowledged there is “a lot of pressure and a lot of intensity currently building” among the public to know “what has happened to this very unfortunate woman” – but said police would await a postmortem, set for Wednesday, before providing further information.
“At this stage, it’s too early to speculate on the cause of death – we simply can’t confirm whether this young lady drowned, or died as a result of being attacked by dingoes,” he said.
“I can confirm that the woman’s body had been touched and interfered with by the dingoes, but we are not speculating yet as to whether that was anything to do with her cause of death”.
Algie said that swimming and dingo safety advice was “more the business” of park rangers than police.
“But, what I would say, is that K’gari is a wilderness area,” he said. “Dingoes are wild animals, and whilst they are very culturally significant to the local First Nations people, and to the people that live on the island, they are still wild animals and need to be treated as such.”
A Canadian friend of the young woman who was working with her at the hostel was helping QPS and Royal Canadian Mounted Police make contact with the woman’s family, he said.
That friend was “extremely traumatised”, Algie said, while police who attended the scene, and people of K’gari, were also exposed to trauma.
“As you can imagine, they are absolutely horrified and shocked at what’s occurred – this is an incident that impacts everybody heavily,” Algie said.
“It is a very sad set of circumstances, and it does impact – particularly an island community – quite harshly”.
Police are appealing for witnesses.
K’gari, the largest sand island on Earth, is a world heritage area whose name means “paradise” in the Butchulla language of its traditional owners, and is an important refuge for dingoes (wongari).
