The family were having a picnic on the beach while holidaying at Cape Leveque when the dingo attacked.

A dingo has bitten a toddler and tried to snatch her from a remote beach in Australia.

The girl's alarmed parents chased the dingo away after the Friday night attack in Western Australia's Kimberley region which broke the child's skin but did not draw blood.

The family were having a picnic on the beach while holidaying at Cape Leveque when the dingo attacked, first grabbing the child's teddy bear before biting her.

The child's mother, Christine Dwyer, told ABC radio the dingo tried to drag her daughter backwards but "only got six inches".

"She tried to crawl away and was crying, and it just ran back in and grabbed her on the back and buttocks," Dwyer said.

Resort staff had been very helpful, shooing away the dog and taking them to nurses to clean up scratches and puncture wounds, she said.

The attack comes nearly 36 years after Azaria Chamberlain was killed by a dingo in Uluru in a case that attracted the attention of the world, after her mother Lindy was convicted of murder and jailed but released after three years when that decision was overturned.