Paris Jackson Apologises For Insensitive "A Dingo Ate My Baby" Joke

Some jokes take things a bit too far, and Paris Jackson found herself in hot water when she visited Australia.

She was Down Under with her rumoured boyfriend, Aussie model Tyler Green, as the VIP guest of Myer, a department store in the country. She was their international guest for the Melbourne Cup, a premier thoroughbred horse race.

While she was in the country, she stopped a zoo, because that's what you in a country that boasts some very unique wildlife. After cradling a koala bear (which, yes, we are very jealous of), she hung out with a dingo, a semi-domesticated feral dog that is somewhat of a mascot in Australia. They're very cute, but can be dangerous creatures, and are considered natural pests.

She posted a now-deleted photo of herself squatting next to a dingo with the caption "a dingo ate my baby." Jackson faced a backlash over the photo, because it references a real-life tragic incident. It is also a joke in America: it was referenced in an episode of Seinfeld and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but Aussies take the situation seriously.

Here's why. In 1980, Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton went on a holiday to Uluru with her family: herself, her then-husband Michael Chamberlain, and their two month-old daughter Azaria. Azaria went missing, but the family insisted that a dingo had taken the baby. Authorities did not believe the Chamberlain's story, and Lindy was subsequently tried and convicted of murdering her child in 1982. She was not released from prison until 1986, and it was only in 2012 that an inquest revealed the nature of Azalia's death from a dingo attack.

Jackson apologised for the gaffe on Twitter, explaining that she didn't know the backstory behind the American pop culture joke. "i was referencing a meme i had no clue it stemmed from such a tragic and horrific incident. my sincerest apologies, from the bottom of my [heart]," she wrote.