Camels For Export

This morning chatting to a bloke at the petrol station, I asked him what he was doing in Copley. He told me he was driving a load of camels to the abattoir in Peterborough, South Australia but he’d broken down.

Not an answer I was expecting.

Camels and their Afghan handlers were first brought successfully into Australia from 1860 as the perfect solution for exploring the outback and the Burke and Wills expedition was the first that used them. The Muslim cameleers soon began running their own camel trains and, by 1890, dominated this business. They encountered a lot of aboriginal groups and a sort of mutual trade arrangement was setup – Afghans taking goods along traditional aboriginal trade routes like the Birdsville Track and bringing in new goods such as sugar, tea, and tobacco.

When motorized transport arrived the cameleers were displaced and the camels were simply abandoned into a world well suited to them. By 2008 it was estimated that there were a million camels in Australia – the largest feral camel population in the world – doing enormous damage to the environment and infrastructure.

The numbers are now closer to 300,00 after culling and other controls. One of these controls is to sell the camels as food to those countries that appreciate them and the Middle East countries love the fact that the animals are free from disease and free from the political issues in North Africa.

Hence the broken down truck in Copley – on its way to supply the Saudi need for camel meet. Not exactly selling sand to the Arabs – but a close second.