Dog’s life for dingoes
AN Australian icon, the dingo has managed to feature twice in a weekend edition of the Bulletin (June 27). The Billabong Sanctuary was again promoting its wildlife and the Azaria Chamberlain death was being remembered after 40 years.
As a kid my constant companion was a cattle dog Rusty, half red dingo. I was devastated when I discovered my father had shot him, spending weeks searching for him when he went missing. The district had been infected with the canine pandemic distemper.
It is not known how long our largest carnivore has been in Australia or how it got here from the north. It is believed it may have come in two waves as the eastern dingo has DNA at considerable variance to the western one. Both have superior anatomical features to the domestic dog for survival. The oldest fossil was, however, found in South Australia. As none have ever been found in Tasmania, they were evidently not here when it was still part of the mainland.
Dingoes have always had a bad rep. My father got a pound for every dingo tail he presented to the police station, and there is still a bounty on them.
It is pointless to recycle the conspiracy theories of the movie Evil Angels, Satan worship, a sacrifice in the wilderness, or flaws in forensic evidence, which could not distinguish blood from a rust inhibitor or a fang tear from a scissor cut. “A dingo ate my baby” was a popular gag-line in numerous American sitcoms.
What is ironic is that one of the Chamberlain daughters, Zahra, became an activist for dingoes.
The hunting habits of this top predator once contributed to our Australian vernacular. If a group of men ganged up on a single individual in a pub brawl they were described as “a pack of dingoes”. Any politician calling his opposition a “dingo” for lacking internal fortitude, would have to withdraw the insult as the word was unparliamentary and replace it with the acceptable euphemism “native dog”.
WILLIAM ROSS, Cranbrook.