Animals & Us
Dr Julie Funnell
One boot thrown at a dingo sparked a life spent undoing decades of misconception about Australia's most misunderstood native animal.
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Dr Julie Funnell grew up in the Blue Mountains exploring the bush, loving animals from age two. But when she moved to Townsville to work at James Cook University, she was still nervous around dogs after 13 years at a Sydney vet hospital. That changed when she volunteered at Billabong Sanctuary in 2013. On her first shift, she threw a boot at a dingo named King thinking he would chase it like a dog. The boot hit him in the forehead. That moment of miscalculation became the beginning of a complete rethinking of how she understood animals.
When Julie tried using old-fashioned dog training methods on the dingoes, they rejected her entirely. Dingoes are not domesticated dogs. They are independent, wary, and cautious of anything new in their environment, traits that help them survive in the wild. As Julie learned more, she discovered the scale of what most Australians didn't know: dingoes appear on postcards alongside kangaroos, yet they are also culled across the country in massive numbers. The term 'wild dog control' masks the fact that most animals being killed are actually dingoes, rebranded to justify lethal removal. Isolated in Australia for thousands of years, dingoes are genetically and behaviourally distinct from domestic dogs and play a vital role in regulating the ecosystem.
Julie's bond with King, Kalari, and Alira taught her that working with an animal's nature, rather than trying to dominate it, creates stronger bonds and better outcomes. She now advocates for coexistence: stable dingo packs combined with good livestock management can prevent predation on farms without requiring killing. She sees hope in regenerative agriculture practices gaining ground and, most importantly, in Traditional Owners finding their voice in how dingoes are managed on Country. Her message is simple: dingoes do not want to interact with humans. They just want to live their lives.
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