What's with the Dingo Bag?
I'd be selling it short to suggest that my five months spent living, working and travelling in Australia was the experience to end all experiences. I learned a lot in that amount of time - about a lot of things! I made new friends, I learned some new ways of doing the work that I do, I got up close and personal with some strange animals, and I experienced many of the country's most beautiful landmarks. And through all of this, I had plenty of time to practice my photography skills - which I took full advantage of.
I was stationed in Melbourne, and one of my first weekend getaways was to Uluru - a huge rock in the centre of the country that I had been really excited about visiting. It's a photographers dream, this massive monolith deep in the Outback, that seems to change colors as the light from the sun reflects off of it. Sunrise and sunset have never looked so beautiful.
Most non-Australians, myself included, likely know of it through that Meryl Streep movie from 1988, A Cry in the Dark. It's the true story of a woman whose baby was taken by a dingo while the family was camping at the base of the rock. The case became tabloid fodder, dividing the country as the mother, Lindy Chamberlain, was accused of murder by those who doubted a wild dog would ever do such a thing. She was tried in the court of public opinion when her demeanor didn't seem to resemble that of a grieving mother, but rather a religious fanatic (Seventh Day Adventist), who was no doubt practicing some ritualistic baby sacrifice. She went to prison for a few years, and was finally released after proof of evidence tampering came to light, as well as remains of the baby's clothing that did in fact show signs of a canine attack. It's a fascinating story - and one that's relevant today as our media finds new and interesting ways of swaying our opinion.
While Lindy Chamberlain's name was restored (at a heavy cost), the reputation of the dingo remains in shambles. It's a shame because as I have learned, these animals (which are not classified as dogs, by the way) are on the verge of extinction, not because of some sort of culling or climate change, but they are breeding with wild dogs. The number of mixed breeds is doing alright, but the pure-blood dingo is quickly declining. They've also been discouraged (by force) from many of their natural habitats, which is allowing alien predators like cats and foxes, to prosper, who in turn are quickly destroying already dwindling populations of other native wildlife. The whole ecological balance has been upset. And while there is no doubt that a dingo killed the Chamberlain baby, we can't blame a wild animal for doing what it does, especially when we know that curious campers and tourists who happily fed these animals throughout the years, were the cause of their decreased fear of humans. Now, while dingo sightings on the mainland are rare, Australia's Frasier Island has become a respite for them, but there too, the problem continues with attacks on people who choose to get too close.
Whatever the case, I didn't exactly jump on this soapbox to save the dingo - and in turn save Australia - at least not back when I was planning my trip to the big rock. I just wanted to hike in the Outback, take some cool pictures and experience 45C temperatures - all of which I did manage to do. As I was gearing up for it though, I had conversations with several Melbournians (co-workers for the most part) about the Chamberlain case. Bringing the story up was often met with an eye roll or a shrug as if to suggest that I was being tacky by daring to go there, but I usually countered that with the fact that most Australians have never visited Uluru, and so there'd be nothing else they could advise me on. In all cases, they would nod in agreement and then tell me their thoughts on the story, which was that Lindy was innocent and the citizens of Oz treated her horribly.
I have an off-putting sense of humor (so I'm told), which I happen to find quite funny, so with one very pregnant co-worker, I jokingly asked her if I could borrow her newborn for my trip. I told her that I needed something to lure dingos out so that I could take pictures. Not in keeping with Aussie hospitality, she promptly refused, but the joke carried on in the weeks that led up to the trip. As it turns out, the Aussies tend to favor off-color humor and political incorrectness almost as much as I do.
The joke was on me a couple of weeks prior to Uluru when I visited Healsville Zoo, just northeast of Melbourne. It's one of those petting zoos, where you can have actual encounters with kangaroos and wallabies, which I love. On our walkabout, we encountered a handler who was taking two adorable dingo pups out for a stroll. I handed my camera to my travel buddy and said "Just keep shooting!" and promptly knelt down to greet them. One of the little buggers decided to take nip at me - which didn't hurt at all, but if you see the picture, it looks like he's taking quite the chomp. I milked that story as much as I could, and my pregnant co-worker laughingly called it karma.
Finally, in Uluru with my travel buddy Jey, we were gearing up for our 11.4 km hike around the rock. We needed a bag to carry water, so we headed out to get one. The little town nearby the rock is essentially a string of hotels ranging from five-star accommodations to full-on camping. Amongst them are nestled a little grocery store and a couple of gift shops - where the selection is somewhat minimal. Our choices of nap sack, therefore, was limited to two - a plain black one, and another with a large dingo face on the back. It's pretty clear which one I chose.
I couldn't carry the bag on our walk because I had all of my camera equipment, so that task went to Jey, and while he wasn't happy about it, he remained a trooper. At one point on the trek I asked him to step up on a boulder and turn away from the camera so I could get a snap of him with the bag. It was there, when I shouted out "Show me the dingo!" that I felt a rustle of wind brush past the back of my legs. I turned around to a see a stray dingo trotting by. We saw no wild life on that entire trip - not even a kangaroo hopping in the distance, but at that very moment, I was mere inches from this damn dog (er ...not a dog).
There is a lot of talk about the Uluru spirits and ancestors not being happy, plus the Aboriginals hold some deep-seeded superstitions. They fear the camera and we happened to be taking pictures at a part of the rock that apparently the Aboriginals don't like you taking pictures of because apparently it gets the gods upset. So taking a photo of a dingo bag in a place where I shouldn't be and having a dingo stroll by - the whole thing was rather trippy.
Needless to say, this became a huge talking point throughout the rest of my trip, and the bag, which I would have originally discarded, became a centre piece. While some might have said that the event was a warning from the gods that I not take pictures on that side of the rock, I would argue that the dingo gods were speaking to me (not the Uluru gods) and they wanted to me to spread the word about their plight- and about that bag.
Friends from Canada came to visit over Christmas and I began photographing them at various landmarks - of course, with the bag. Melissa was the first model with her back to the camera, on our private island out in the Great Barrier Reef. Angelo took his turn at a lookout point in Sydney, and Mini stepped up on our walk through Bondi Beach where a surfer agreed to let us use his board. A tour guide took us to a cheese shop in Tasmania and gladly donned the bag at the checkout counter, and in Melbourne, my co-worker Craig demonstrated rising productivity on a dashboard, while the bag sat nearby.
The bag has become sort of a garden gnome for me, and quite a popular one in my social circle. I went to Brisbane and filmed Jane's daughter at the Australia Zoo - and then had an encounter of my own with two beautiful dingos. The handlers there were quite impressed with my story, and were as disappointed as I was that I didn't have the bag on hand. My Australian odyssey ended with a final photograph with the baby that started it all - Madison, who was born shortly after Christmas, too late to come with me on my Uluru trip.
Once back home in Canada I was hit up with requests from family and friends who now want their picture taken with the bag. Even my own mother has been hounding me about it. I have instituted strict rules about these photos. I'm trying to keep it down to one person per city (or town, or landmark). My dog had Toronto, so my mother will have Niagara Falls - right by the casino that is pretty much her second home. I took a picture of a friend in Gatlinburg, somewhere in the Great Smokey Mountains, but I failed to get a picture at the Creationist Museum in Kentucky, as it was raining and (long story) the Christians didn't feel comfortable getting their picture taken by me.
You can be sure that the bag will continue to travel and I will find more willing participants to hold it. Other than one per city, I've instituted other rules for these pictures. Faces can't be shown. I would like the model to be doing something unique - not just holding the bag (so to speak), and hopefully applicable to the location. And of course, I finish these pictures off with some of the most godawful HDR, in keeping with the cheesy nature of this project.
It's become a fun challenge for me. How do you pull your model out of their comfort zone and get them to act silly for the camera? How can you compose a shot so that it tells a story about the person and the location? (Even if the story is fake). And just how many ways can you photograph one little bag? These are things that a photographer has to master, and what better way to practice than with a theme like this? So if I'm raising awareness about the plight of the dingo, and maybe even contributing in some small way to saving the delicate Australian ecosystem - well, all the better!
