Laurie Corbett was born in Castlemaine, Victoria in 1941 and spent much of his early life catching wildlife to supplement the family diet and thus developed an understanding and love of the bush and its fauna. He joined the CSIRO Division of Wildlife Research to study dingoes and their prey in central Australia 1968-75 and later 1980-96 in Kakadu National Park.

Intervening those years, he studied Scottish wildcats and feral cats in Aberdeenshire and the Outer Hebrides. At that time, he regularly returned home for Christmas where, en route, he ‘discovered’ dingoes in Thailand and other South-east Asian countries; and subsequently made regular visits to study them resulting in a Whitley Award for his 1995 book The Dingo in Australia and Asia. 

In 1997, he led ecological surveys at Bradshaw Field Training Area and at Christmas Island, and concurrently was a member of IUCN’s Canid Specialist Group with field work in Indonesia. In 2007, he formed his own consulting company to provide dingo management advice at mine sites in deserts throughout Australia. Throughout this journey, he met an incredible array of characters and experienced many unusual events, most pleasant but others not so.

This illustrated narrative provides research data in conjunction with the day-to-day joy, frustration and danger associated with working in outback Australia. Similarly, in relatively isolated regions of Thailand, Laos, and Burma where the English language is not spoken and unintentional non-compliance with local customs can have dangerous outcomes.