A 19-year-old Canadian woman has been found dead on a beach on K'gari (formerly Fraser Island), surrounded by a pack of dingoes. Her body was discovered near the Maheno shipwreck at around 6:15am on Monday by two men driving along the eastern beaches. She had left her backpacker hostel about 75 minutes earlier, telling colleagues she was heading to the beach.
Queensland police have not speculated on the cause of death, stating that a postmortem examination would be conducted on Wednesday. Experts say both drowning and a dingo attack are possible, noting that dingoes are active at dawn and dusk and that the eastern beaches are unpatrolled with strong currents and marine hazards.
Two campsites, Maheno and Wahba, have been closed and park rangers are increasing patrols. The state's acting environment and tourism minister, Deb Frecklington, expressed condolences and announced additional signage to warn of dingo activity. Violent interactions between dingoes and humans have been increasing in recent years, with several incidents including pack attacks.
Central Queensland University senior lecturer Bradley Smith cautioned against "dingo bashing" and sensationalism, emphasising that human behaviour often provokes the animals. Griffith University associate professor Georgette Leah Burns, who was involved in the response to a fatal dingo attack in 2001, noted improvements in dingo management since then but criticised the cull that followed that incident.
