Dingo Bold: The Life and Death of K'gari Dingoes

Description

Dingo Bold is a thought-provoking exploration of the relationship between people and dingoes. At its heart is Rowena Lennox's encounter with a dingo on the beach on K'gari (Fraser Island), a young male she nicknames Bold. Struck by this experience, and by the intense, often polarised opinions expressed in public conversations about dingo conservation and control, she sets out to understand the complex relationship between humans and dingoes. Weaving together ecological data, interviews with people connected personally and professionally with K'gari's dingoes, and Lennox's expansive reading of literary, historical and scientific accounts, Dingo Bold considers what we know about the history of relations between dingoes and humans, and what preconceptions shape our attitudes today. Do we see dingoes as native wildlife or feral dogs? Wild or domesticated animals? A tourist attraction or a threat? And how do our answers to these questions shape our interactions with them? Dingo Bold is both a moving memoir of love and loss through Lennox's observations of the natural world and an important contribution to wider conversations about conservation and animal welfare. "Combining natural history, Indigenous culture, memoir, and environmental politics, this is an elegantly written and affectionate tribute to Australia's most maligned and least understood native animal." Jacqueline Kent "Fuelled by empathy, curiosity and passion, and informed by research, data and observation, this moving and compelling book speaks to the heart and to the head. Rowena Lennox poses questions about our relationship with dingoes - and our role in the natural world - that are as bold and lively as her subject." Debra Adelaide

Rowena Lennox has published essays, fiction, memoir and poems in Hecate, Kill Your Darlings, Meanjin, New Statesman, Seizure, Social Alternatives and Southerly, among others. Her book Fighting Spirit of East Timor (Pluto/Zed, 2000) won a NSW Premier's History Award in 2001.

' ... a profound meditation on the relationship between humans and dingoes, between tourism and the wild, and between science and culture.' -- Chris Lee * Manning Community News * 'Dingo Bold is a thoroughly engaging and deeply personal book that examines dingo life and the humans charged with their survival.' -- Warren Bonett * Books+Publishing * '[The book] brings into focus the complex entanglements at play between humans and other species, effectively promoting consideration and the importance and agency of non-human animals in an interconnected world ... Dingo Bold ultimately offers hope for the future of dingoes and dingo-human relations.' -- Simone Lyons * Text: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses *