This crazy story happened to me when I was just a cadet at the Sydney Morning Herald. It was November ’97, and I was only nineteen.

A call had come in to the newsroom that a tourist at Uluru had been harassed by a dingo. There wasn’t really a story in it, but Ayers Rock / dingoes; they needed a photographer. I was it.
After two days of loitering in the bus bays and surrounding scrub I hadn’t even seen so much as a dingo’s dropping so I decided to return to the western car-park and drive back to the motel for a swim. A group of Japanese tourists had just arrived in a lime-green bus and an aboriginal woman in a torn lime-green cardigan was trying to sell them plywood boomerangs.

“Are you hearing what I’m saying to you, young man?” a stumpy Jap in a suit was saying to his protégé, probably his grandson, as they climbed down from the bus. “These people had no technology, and that is why they didn’t progress. No wheel, no bow and arrow, no agriculture, no guns. But that is why the Japanese people will always be so strong in the world. Our control of technology!”
 While the name-tagged tour group members were being assembled into two lines by their flag-carrying guide, the old fella slipped around the back of the bus to take a photo where for some reason he was attacked by a dingo, which bit him on the leg before escaping back into the scrub.

I heard the girlish scream and his pleas for help so I ran to the sounds and helped him to his feet. He had fallen onto a prickly bush, so he was agitated, repeating the same word over and over, which turned out to be “glasses!”, which he had trodden on.

That was enough for me so I set off with the freshly made paw prints constantly in my field of vision. They headed south around the side of Uluru and I soon came to a tree which had a hub-cap nailed to it. The mark of the taboo boundary.
“Damn it!” I declared to myself, “I’m going into that taboo area!”

I was very frightened because I had heard over the years of the terrible curse, which protected the backside of Uluru. The old trackers had told me that even when the federal police where there, although they had pretended to look everywhere, they’d never raised the courage to venture into that area.

This could be my big break,” I told to my self, “even if the bone is pointed at me, even if the debil-debil get me. I’m going in!”
The scrub was thick and forbidding and I was soon hopelessly lost and had given up, sitting on the rock with flies all over me and two Nikon cameras hanging around my neck, but just then I heard a rhythmic growling coming from somewhere close, and when I parted the bushes to my right, there in front of me, across an open space of salt-span I saw a large cave in the rock face and inside it was a very dirty young woman who was having a sex with a “native dog”. The type of dog called Dingo.

They appeared to be enjoying themselves so much I almost forgot why I was there before taking up my cameras and shooting off a roll from each as the wild things cavorted. The girl was about sixteen but it was hard to tell, she was so covered in dirt and dust, and the dingo obscured most of my view of her. But it was definitely Azaria! Complete with dreadlocks.
It was a stunning revelation! For all those years Azaria had been living with the dingoes at backside of Uluru!

Later on I’d get to know her salivating partner; Big Dingo. He was a large dog, with a scruffy tail which gave away his age, but he wore a claret colored fez that had rolled down the back of the rock the year before, and did he look cool! But then I noticed the set of teeth that that dude carried in his jaws, and thought about how I’d feel if I caught some feral voyeur shooting off pictures off me and my girlfriend “at it” so I slinked off with my Nikons between my legs, and went straight to the satellite to send the pictures.
The very next morning my photographs appeared under the headline, “STILL BEING EATEN BY A DINGO? AZARIA RETURNS!” The editor had had the good taste to put a small black rectangle over each pair of eyes, but you could still see the passion. The biggest thing since Fergie with her top off!

My boss congratulated me on my ‘scoop’ and made me his main photographer for the rescue of Azaria, beginning the very next day.
Naturally, the local, state, and federal police, the RSPCA, National Parks, Aboriginal Affairs, Water Conservation, Catholic Missionaries, and Derryn Hinch were in the search party, which was halted at the taboo zone by an injunction granted by Pat O’Shane. “I’ll never forget the way those kids ribbed me about having freckles” she was reported as saying.

Three months went by, with the first week taken up by matters of Traditional Law and an attempt at defining the meaning of the words, ‘taboo’, ‘curse’ and ‘malicious intent’. An appeal to a supernatural being to do harm to intruders required discussion as the identity of the supernatural being. It ended in a heated argument about where logic and reason run out.
“How seriously should we take this? Must science be cancelled in schools and replaced by either biblical or dreamtime creation stories?” Kerry O’Brien asked his many earnest viewers on the 7.30 Report.

Finally the appeal to enter that part of Australia was granted, but only after each of us has signed an indemnity form. We all went trampling our way trough the scrub with several mobile TV studios following in our footprints, avoiding the bigger trees.

When we reached the vicinity of the cave I dropped my role as guide, pushed through the bushes and starting snapping pictures of the commotion at the mouth of the cave. We must have burst in on some kind of bestial orgy; naked dingoes ran everywhere, and there in the center, on all fours, stunned by the appearance of Derryn Hinch, 43 police, 117 journalist and the entire staff of ATSIC was our dirty and disheveled prey.
Just about everyone ran forward to claim the prize so within a minute Azaria had been saved and taken for medical tests. I could still hear the siren blaring as the ambulance sped away across the plain. She had obviously never been inside an ambulance before but the second tranquilizer dart had done the trick.

More of my photos graced the cover of newspapers and magazines and car ads, then suddenly, Azaria was the word on everybody lips. Azaria like ‘air’, or Azaria like ‘ah’, was the biggest question of the year. Crowds and cameras surrounded the hospital she had been taken to but for three days there had been no word as to her condition. A photo of a puddle at the base of a chair leg was inconclusive, and went to page three.
When she did emerge, flanked by Ita Butthole and Maggie Tabbernacle, they quickly left in a stretch limousine. Azaria was made up by Ashley ward using Lancôme products, hair by Serge Normant, and her aquamarine dress by Versace.

At the press conference she could only answer questions by stroking the carpet once with her paw for yes, and two for no. It was breathtaking television, but left many questions unanswered as she was quickly hustled away by Ita and her bevy of shoulder-padded staff. The scavengers were agitated, pushing and shoving for photographs but Azaria was closely monitored, but my boss was famous for his determination to get ‘the story’ so when he told me he was going to climb the side of the Hilton to get an interview with A/C I wasn’t surprised; until, he told me he was taking his poodle in a backpack. To translate.

When he first spotted Azaria through the third story window she was laying on the shag carpet with her chin resting on her folded hands, still wearing the aquamarine dress by Versace. Boss had taken a freshly killed rabbit for her and she was reportedly quite excited when she looked up and saw it, wagging the tail that wasn’t there, as she moved on all fours toward him, dribbling just a whisker of saliva onto her Versace..
After eating the rabbit’s heart and kidneys she was eager to talk, if you could call it that. Snooty, my boss’s poodle, had some trouble with the colloquialisms but soon he was transmitting a steady flow of images from the twilight world of a dog-woman, who had naturally assumed she was a dingo all those years because she had no other role model. She reported seeing the first tourist at the age of 35 (dog years), but she didn’t pick up on the similarities because they were walking on their hind legs and had strangely shaped heads. The weirdest thing for her was not having a tail. Everybody else did, “I felt inadequate, inferior, and vulnerable,” she confessed.

Snooty had been prompted to ask about the relationship with Big Dingo, but he shouldn’t have asked twice. The idea that there was anything wrong with having a sex with a dingo was new to Azaria but she had been picking it up in the facial expressions of Ita and her friends. And she didn’t like it.
Why do you keep asking about me and BD? Does it make you feel good? Is it any of your business? What kind of a bitch are you anyway? She snapped at Snooty?

There was a quick tilt of Snooty’s head. He always reacted sharply to being mistaken for a bitch, and blamed his collar and haircut. “I’m no bitch! If you don’t mind”; he indicated by lifting his back leg.

“OK, my mistake: said Azaria, “but I’m used to being with BD, and he’s a real dog’s dog. I bet his action would make your pelvic thrust seem a bit feeble. I adore the feel of a hairy chest. And his got hair all over, not silky little curls like you. OK! I don’t like his bad breath, especially after he has been eating road-kill, but he is so ardent and lively, with all the smooching so I love it when he laps me with that long rough tongue of his. Unfortunately he can’t count up to 69 and he’s not so keen on fellatio because he licks is dick better than I ever could. The main thing though, when BD says doggy-style, he means doggy-style!”.
The interview on page one next day blew the story wide open. Azaria had been abandoned in the wild by her fanatically religious vegetarian mother after her tiny body had been smeared with Chunky Pal and a dog biscuit carved into a little cross had been placed on her tongue. Loosely paralleling a little known verse in their aberrant scriptures. There was a wave of sympathy for the poor girl who had suffered at the hands of such weirdo brutes. Some hot feminist lawyer friends of Ita’s had taken Azaria over and presented her to the court as the total victim. Under hypnosis she recalled the first night in the cave, how the pack of almost rabid dogs had licked all of the Pal off her, ripped her pink jumpsuit into shreds, and then proceeded to pack rape her in a canine frenzy of barking, growling, fighting and rooting. The courtroom was barely able to keep its back legs on the floor. They were perfectly enthralled, until only the number of zeroes in the compensation payout was left to be determined.

But then the case got sticky. The lawyers (on 48%centage) claimed that Azaria had been found in a place where bad spirits had been invoked to dwell. They wished to sue the local aborigines for declaring areas taboo because it made those areas exclusive and dangerous! A precedent for recognizing curses had been set at the recent Royal Commission. They also claimed that Azaria had been given Uluru in return for sex with Big Dingo. That he had used deceit and intimidation to invade her, ‘Sacred Place’.
“Now it turns out it wasn’t even your rock! You only got here four thousand years ago!” Azaria was claimed to have interjected from the witness box, according to Snooty who had been installed as canine translator on $1000 a day.

“Well if it’s not my rock, whose is it?”  BD had snapped back defensively, “Not those guys who did their best to shoot and trap and poison us all”, he said pointing to the Park Rangers sitting in the front row.
The old dingo was howled down for being racist. “These people are indigenous!” shouted one of the non-aboriginal park rangers. “We’ve given you, dingo-dog, the status of native animal, king of the food chain, whether you and your mates deserve it or not, so stop complaining. But these people have been indigenous for years! It’s their rock and don’t argue.”

“What are you talking about?” asked BD. “The rock is 400 million years old, according to my research assistant, so who could possibly claim a stake to it. Neither primates nor canines evolved as a component of the Australian eco-system. We’re all blow-ins!  Lets face it and get on with it. The old dingo fence still stands but I’m not going to chew my leg off over that. It’s not a perfect world but the best we can do is to look forward together, to live and enjoy. The future requires co-operation from us all in response to the essentials and in every instance, to act rationally. I’m going back to my liar and contemplate the meaning of all I have seen and heard since I was dragged into this world of humans. Ciao!
BD left the courtroom flanked by scammers.

“Mr. Dingo! The movie Sir! We need to speak about the movie!”
“Cool it, Bud. My agent is the one to see about that.”

The court was in uproar, so to clear it and calm everyone down the Judge decided to move proceedings, in what become known to most viewers as “The ‘Return to the Rock’.
The court case and the evening news and the movie all began to blend into one thing as the evidence was compiled, tapes were edited, books were published, judgments made, fan clubs established, promotional tours organized, the compensation payment made, and the camera glided down into the freshly excavated lair for the premier of Azaria’s own weekly program, ‘Azaria’s Den’.

“This is my idea of comfort” said Azaria, playing with her pearls as the camera panned her hole that she had made really big, with a window over the sink. “Living in a nice cool hole in the ground makes a lot of sense because of the naturally occurring insulation, as long as it faces north. Just slipping out to catch a hare or lizard is wonderful, and I used to do it every day, but I like to wash my hands before eating. That is way I installed a Stainfree kitchen sink. I take what is relevant to modern living from whatever culture I can; and I’m into recycling. Those vases were coke bottles before I smashed the top off.” Azaria read from the cue card.
“The strength to absorb the best and to discard cultural obsoletes is what I’ve learned since having my horizons expanded. Why gnaw bones when I have a carving knife, rub two sticks together when I’ve got one dollar lighter, or buy herbs from Lebanon when I can grow my own?” she said directing the camera toward a window box of a green plants. “Anyone who drives a car, wears Levi’s, eats cornflakes and watches TV hasn’t got any claim against assimilation, and neither does Mr. D, now that he has taking up smoking Citanes. But dingoes are simply creatures; I ought to know because I used to think that I was one. They don’t have any ideas about an ultimate authority or godlike entity so they operate on an instinctual level. No guilts, no neurotic obsessions or domination by megalomaniac misfits. They just live their paw-to-mouth existence, one day at a time, so their social values revolve around strength, and intelligence, for getting food and sex; and cigarettes.”

Just then, the estranged BD pushed his head through the Khaki curtains at the side entrance. BD was obviously upset, having lost his honor, partner, and home. He ignored the camera crew and spoke directly to Azaria. “A/C, during the months that the trial dragged on you become ever more distant from me. Under the sway of Ita and the lawyers.” He said turning to the studio audience, “What is it about you human beings that makes you so sure of your superiority over us ‘lesser’ organisms?”
“I’ve learned to speak like a human, as you have, and what I have to say with my new voice is that you humans are no better, and actually much worse, than us dingoes; despite all your guff about rights.

“I think therefore I am!” yet even a human in a coma has more rights than me. I’ve heard a lot of talk about unpaid work during this case. So what about Seeing Eye dogs, Sheep dogs, Guard dogs. St. Bernards? How much money did Lassie make? Canine exploitation has been with us through the ages. And continues! Except for the token arse licking lap dog,” he said, looking at Snooty, paused in his translation.”
You people like to think that you have a monopoly on higher emotions like compassion and reverence, but I know my own feelings and I promise you my love is conscious, heartfelt and true.” he said turning back to Azaria with a sad look and hang-dog expression. “So ‘puppy-love’, why do you follow the rules that keep as apart? I love you Azaria, and don’t care that you aren’t a real dingo!”

Azaria was visibly moved by the first instance of sincerity she had encountered since her rescue.
“Oh, BD! How could I have forsaken you? Everything you say is true!” gushed Azaria as she ran into his arms / front legs. “You are so right! These people are animals. From now on it’s you and me! We have the right to be happy together. Cross-Species Liberation has begun!”

With the huge compensation payment, book deal, and the movie rights, Azaria decided to formally marry the BD and make a real go of it.
“Azaria, you can’t marry a dog!” declared Ita, who had assumed a mother role at 5% gross.

“Why not? You did!” she said bitchelly.
Fred Nile was in the audience, called for a microphone and began a sermon on the Christian attitude to …

“Don’t quote what your bible has to say about anything to me, please Fred.” Said Azaria through the television Fred was watching himself on. It was written by white males so it is irrelevant. The cat is out of the bag. Homosexuality is strictly out according to your gospel but the gays broke through, and so shall we. This is my multi-culture and you better respect it. There’s more to life than stealing garbage. In this last chunk of the 20th century it is definitely a case of survival of the fittest, so BD and me are going to invest our money wisely and get on top.
She rolled out a sheet of building plans on the Ikea kitchen table. They were blueprints for a dingo-shaped structure, only identifiable as BD because of the fez; but it was enormous. Six stories of theaters, restaurants, a water slide and shark show; Slot machines, souvenirs and Dingo art. The Big Dingo held up a fresh femur in his right hand, a lot like the Statue of Liberty.

Endless truckloads of steel and concrete, portable sheds full of workers, and thirty three thousand gallons of yellowish paint, arrived on site and soon the structure rose above the desert like a tribute to the taste of the twentieth century. Big BD was very impressive. Especially the way he was silhouetted by the setting sun. A photographer's dweam. The eyes, I was told, could be seen from Alice Springs on a clear night. Apollo missions used him to check their navigation. Tourists flocked from all over the world to see Azaria and BD dance a very sexy tango.

These days I am a very successful editor here in New York and I owe a lot to Azaria and BD, for generating the story which was my big break, so last week when I was in a travel agency downtown I couldn’t help but to chuckle to myself when I noticed the woman next to me was looking at brochures of Australia, and one of them had a center-spread photo of Uluru.
“What’s that Mummy?” her little girl asked her.

“Oh, just some ancient extrusive landform on the way to Club Big Dingo, Dearest.”  she answered her excited little girl.