A teenager’s death on an untamed island has put the spotlight on its inhabitants

By Hilary Whiteman, CNN

Brisbane, Australia (CNN) — The sun was still low on the horizon when 19-year-old Piper James walked toward the Pacific Ocean for a morning swim on an island whose name in the local language means “paradise.”

Within two hours, she was found dead, her body surrounded by dingoes, wild Australian native dogs that roam freely on K’gari, a national park famous for its natural beauty off the country’s eastern coast.

It’s not yet clear what caused the death of the Canadian backpacker, a young woman with an adventurous spirit, who had been working on the World Heritage-listed island for several weeks, fulfilling a long-held dream of visiting Australia.

Preliminary autopsy results found evidence of drowning, but also dingo bites inflicted before and after she died. “Pre-mortem dingo bite marks are not likely to have caused immediate death,” the Queensland Coroner’s Court said in a statement.

“Of course, we all want to believe it was drowning,” said her grieving father, Todd James. “It’s horrific, but maybe a little more peaceful than the alternative.”

Pathology tests to determine the cause of Piper’s death could take several weeks, but if dingoes are found to have played a significant role, it would be only the third fatal dingo attack in Australia in nearly 50 years – and the first involving an adult.

In 1980, a dingo infamously snatched baby Azaria Chamberlain from her parents’ tent in the Northern Territory. At that time, no one believed a dingo would take an infant and, despite her claims of innocence, the baby’s mother Lindy Chamberlain was jailed for murder. She was exonerated years later, when new evidence supported her story, inspiring a courtroom drama starring Meryl Streep.

The second fatality occurred in 2001, when 9-year-old Clinton Gage was mauled on K’gari, then called Fraser Island, by two dingoes who also attacked his younger brother.

“That’s when we started to see the fences being put up around the townships and the resorts,” said George Seymour, mayor of the Fraser Coast region that includes K’gari.

In the days afterward, more than 30 dingoes on the island were “humanely destroyed,” a decision that prompted public outcry.

A possible third fatality has put some in the community on edge. Not because of any change in the perceived risk – which they know well – but because they fear it could drive calls for another cull.

James said if dingoes are ultimately found to be responsible, Piper would not have supported a cull. “We want no harm done to any animals over this, because Piper would not want that number one, and would be devastated to be any part of that,” he said.

Visitors to K’gari are warned of the risks, but James says young foreign nationals like his daughter, who work on the island, need firmer guardrails. Piper had told her parents that dingoes looked “cute.”

“They look like her dog from home,” said James.

“Those dogs, I said, ‘You don’t touch them. You can’t touch them.’ And she’s like ‘I know.’”

Do not go into the water

Around half a million people visit K’gari every year for its white-sand beaches, sparkling blue lakes and native wildlife – including dingoes, or wongari, as they’re known in the local Aboriginal language.

Up to 200 dingoes roam the island, and while they look similar to their relatives on the mainland, their isolation from domestic and feral dogs means they have some of the purest dingo DNA. To Australia, their conservation is considered an issue of “national significance.”

While dingoes are treasured, they’re also acknowledged as dangerous.

Visitors to K’gari are warned to stay at least 20 meters from the animals, travel in groups, and keep children within arm’s reach. “Dingo sticks” are provided to ward off those that get too close.

“Dingoes see people as a source of food, and that’s the issue, not people themselves,” said Ben Allen, a wildlife biologist who works for Ecosure, an environmental consultancy that did the last major review of dingoes on K’gari in 2012, though smaller ones have followed.

“Over here, they sort of jokingly call it seagull syndrome, where you give a seagull a chip and then it wants the whole hamburger,” said Allen. “Well, these seagulls have got four feet and teeth, so you don’t really want to be feeding them a chip, because when it comes to ask for the whole hamburger, you can have problems.”

Tourists are urged to lock up their food and trash, and anglers instructed to bury any bait that may attract scavengers. Hefty fines are issued for anyone who feeds them or is seen to be encouraging their presence. Information guides warn visitors not to run, as dingoes will give chase.

“In the past, we’ve told people that if you’re on the beach and you’re being stalked, you should go into the water,” said Seymour, the local mayor.

However, that advice changed after recent attacks – including two in 2023, when a 10-year-old boy was dragged underwater by a dingo before his sister stepped in, and when a woman was attacked despite running into the surf to escape four dingoes. She was pulled from the water by two men and treated for serious injuries to her legs and arms.

“I’ve been saying for a couple of years that there is a risk of a fatality,” said Seymour.

An early-morning swim

On the morning of her death, Piper James had gone for a swim alone on the beach near the rusty hull of the Maheno shipwreck, a local landmark that washed ashore in a cyclone almost 100 years ago. No one knows what happened next.

“We don’t know if she actually went in the water,” said her father, Todd. “If she did go in, there’s a good chance she drowned. She was a strong swimmer … But good swimmers get taken away all the time.”

Swimming is not advised on the island’s unpatrolled beaches and strong ocean currents are considered hazardous, especially along the eastern coast. Strong winds on Monday whipped up eight-foot (2.5-meter) waves, according to one resident, who lives nearby.

It’s possible James got into trouble in the surf before dingoes entered the picture.

James knows his daughter didn’t take a dingo stick with her – because she didn’t think she’d need it.

“Piper should not have gone. She made that decision to go. I just wish she’d maybe taken a stick, or not have gone at all. She shouldn’t have gone alone, that’s the bottom line.”

James said Piper loved Byron Bay and Bondi Beach – other popular Australian destinations for beach-loving tourists – but K’gari was a “next-level kind of experience.”

Scott Bell, the secretary of the Happy Valley Community Association on K’gari, has been visiting the island on and off since the 1960s, and understands its appeal.

“It’s a magical sort of place,” he said. “It is a wilderness area. And in that environment, there are a lot of dangers, be they sharks, snakes, spiders or dingoes.”

Bell said his time on the island has taught him to stand up to dingoes. “You stand tall, they see a large animal there, and they tend to run away,” said Bell. Children are particularly vulnerable due to their smaller size and natural reaction when scared.

“Kids tend to run… That’s probably the worst thing you can do. Turn your back on a predator running, be it a lion, tiger, bear, you know you’re in trouble,” he said.

Bell said that, until the cause of James’ death is confirmed, it’s too early to decide what should be done. He said rangers are working hard to manage the risks – but for as long as humans and dingoes share the island, that risk will never truly go away.

The land’s traditional custodians, the Butchulla people, have a culturally significant bond with the island’s dingoes, stretching back thousands of years. They have long called for caps on visitor numbers, especially during the dingoes’ breeding season from March to May, to lower the risk.

“Everyone should enjoy K’gari, but they need to come when it is not the breeding season,” Christine Royan, director of the Butchulla Aboriginal Corporation, told local media.

“The solution is not to blame or punish the animal,” she added. “We’re going to fight anybody that wants to remove the wongari from K’Gari.”

Queensland’s state premier has ruled out a cap on visitor numbers and says any formal response will come after the full results of the autopsy. Seymour has called for children to be banned from camping outside fenced areas.

“If the government has to tell you to keep your children within arm’s length – that is not why people go camping. People go camping to feel free to be there within nature. I just don’t think it’s suitable for children to be camping in the unfenced areas,” he said.

Piper’s father agrees that children are at risk – especially those who camp outside fenced areas.

“You cannot leave people exposed and children exposed and let parents think that it’s not going to happen to them, because we thought it wouldn’t happen to Piper.”

Inherent risks of nature

Over the years, individual dingoes deemed too habituated to humans have been euthanized, in consultation with the Butchulla people. It’s not a measure taken lightly and only occurs after specific dingoes pose a repeated threat to visitors’ safety.

Allen, from Ecosure, says annual turnover in dingo populations is quite high – about two thirds of the island’s dingoes die naturally each year. “Not every pup can survive when you’re stuck on an island,” he said.

The population typically peaks between December and February, when pups are learning to become independent. “It’s not uncommon for this time of year to see the larger group sizes, which coincides with summer when everybody in Australia is at the beach,” he said.

In some ways, Australia’s challenge with dingoes is not dissimilar to issues elsewhere, for example Japan’s attempts to hold bears at bay, or India’s problem with lions.

However, the dingo population is not growing – it’s people who are becoming more common, bringing carloads of food for family trips, and driving up and down the beach where dingoes would typically hunt.

To some, they may look like small domestic dogs, but they’re unpredictable and wild. And just as tourists are urged to stay away from large predators in other nations, they need to keep their distance from dingoes, no matter how harmless they may seem.

“If I travel to Kruger National Park in South Africa and wanted to go for a walk, I can accept a certain level of risk. I might get eaten by a lion or stomped on by an elephant,” said Allen.

“If I do the same in Chitwan in Nepal, which is a beautiful national park, I’ve got to put up with tigers and leopards and elephants there, too.

“We don’t have lions and tigers and bears, but we’ve got dingoes and kangaroos and lots of venomous snakes and all that kind of thing. There’s just inherent risks with being out in nature.”

The James family plans to travel to K’gari in the coming weeks to attend a smoking ceremony as guests of the island’s traditional custodians. The ancient ritual will see smoke from smoldering native leaves waft over the island’s sandy beaches – to cleanse, and to heal.

James wants more to change as a result of his daughter’s death – to force a change in rules and culture, so there are more guardrails around children and young travelers, like Piper, who are strong and independent but don’t necessarily have the life experience to fully appreciate the dangers.

“Maybe more education with Piper would help, because when you’re put on the tour, you’re educated, and then you’re protected, and then you feel safe,” he said. “Then you’re left alone and things are a little different than the tour.”

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