‘She’s our only baby’: Mother of teen found dead on Australian beach speaks out

“Piper graduated last year and it’s always been her dream to travel,” Angela James told Global News.

“Since she was little, she’s been planning these huge extravagant dreams of travelling. So she and her girlfriend decided to save up for a year for this trip. So she was travelling with her best friend and they left at the end of October and they were supposed to tour all of Australia and their tickets weren’t due to come back the end of March.”

Angela said she last spoke to her daughter on Saturday morning and Piper said she was having the time of her life.

“We told her, like we did everything, we like, (said) you have to be careful, you’re only 19. I wanted her to wait a little longer, to be a little older, but no, mom, I’m going,” she said.

“And, you know, we warned her about everything. We had a rule that she wasn’t supposed to go swimming alone. She wasn’t supposed to go out alone ever. And she broke those rules and it cost her her life.”

1:20
B.C. tourist found dead on Australian beach

Angela told Global News that the Australian authorities will be sending Piper’s body back to them, but they will be conducting an autopsy first.

“She’s our only baby,” she said. “He wanted her to be with us forever. We joked that we would move anywhere she went and he had tried to get her to promise to always live with us. We made her promise to come home from Australia, I said you can’t fall in love with a boy, you have to come home.”

One of Piper’s friends described her as an adventurous, free spirit who loved travel and dogs.

Brianna Falk knew Piper for about three years and says they went to school together.

Get breaking National news

For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.

“It was very important to her to be able to travel, like she loved travelling, she loved nature,” Falk told Global News.

“She definitely spoke about wanting to go (to Australia) with a lot of people.”

However, Piper ended up travelling with her best friend.

“They just planned to travel until they kind of lost the itch,” Falk added. “I know they had spoken to me a few weeks ago. I was asking about their plan, and they were planning to go find somewhere to work so that they could make money to keep exploring and jumping around the cities and just kind of being free.”

Canadian police have not confirmed the woman’s identity.

They said that a body was found on K’gari (formerly known as Fraser Island) at about 6.35 a.m. local time on Monday, surrounded by dingoes.

Police were called to the beach, north of the Maheno Shipwreck, to reports of an unresponsive woman, .

Piper’s father has not spoken publicly, but did post a message about his daughter on Facebook.

Todd James wrote that they will always remember his daughter’s infectious laugh and kind spirit.

“I admired her strength and determination to go after her dreams,” he wrote.

“She was glad I was on board for her trip to Australia. Lol, she said, ‘Because I’m 18, and you can’t stop me!’ Mostly, I loved hearing about and seeing the bonds and friendships she was developing as she grew into her beautiful self. She loved and was proud of her work at BC Wildfire Services.

“Piper would work hard so she could play hard. So many are going to miss you, my precious little baby girl. Maybe gone, but how can we ever forget you? The pain…RIP my baby.”

Piper had been working for six weeks at a hostel on the island, police Insp. Paul Algie told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and had informed colleagues that she was going for a swim about 75 minutes before her body was discovered.

Her next known sighting was between 6 a.m. and 6:15 a.m. on the beach, when two male witnesses saw a large pack of dingoes.

The cause of her death is still being investigated.

Falk said Piper’s family was originally from Ontario and moved to Campbell River a few years ago.

She told Global News that Piper was a strong swimmer.

“The summer before, I spent the whole summer at the lake,” Falk said.

“She’d race me across the lake. We’d, you know, have a couple drinks and see how far we could get… there’s no doubt she was a great swimmer.

Falk said Piper was also really fond of dogs and loved the beach.

“She was definitely very fond of animals,” she said. “I didn’t see her with any other animals besides her dogs, but I know she was definitely an animal lover.”

Falk said Piper wore her heart on her sleeve.

“I’m going to miss her very much,” she said.

–with files from Rachel Goodman

&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.