Article #24145

As dingoes vanish from parts of Australia, a new documentary is calling on governments to move away from eradication and towards solutions that benefit both farmers and animals

Carol Pettersen was a small child when her family moved deep into the bush around the Fitzgerald river, on Western Australia’s south coast. It was the 1940s, and her white father and Aboriginal mother had broken the law simply by being together. So the bush became their refuge.

In that country of mallee heath, banksias and low coastal scrub, dingoes were part of the family’s hidden world. At night, Pettersen could hear them calling through the dark; by day, she glimpsed them moving through the bush – a flicker of red fur among the trees.