By 2008, it was feared that Central Australia's feral camel population had grown to about one million and was projected to double every 8 to 10 years. Camels are known to cause serious degradation of local environmental and cultural sites, particularly during dry conditions. An AU$19 million management program was funded in 2009, and, upon completion in 2013, the feral population was estimated to have been reduced to around 300,000.

Australian feral camels are feral populations consisting of two species of camel : mostly dromedaries ( Camelus dromedarius ) but also some Bactrian camels ( Camelus bactrianus ). Imported into Australia from British India and Afghanistan [1] during the 19th century for transport and construction during the colonisation of the central and western parts of Australia , many were released into the wild after motorised transport replaced the use of camels in the early 20th century, resulting in a fast-growing feral population.

A prospector riding a camel which held a world record for distance travelled without water (600 miles), 1895

Camels had been used successfully in desert exploration in other parts of the world. The first suggestion of importing camels into Australia was made in 1822 by Danish-French geographer and journalist Conrad Malte-Brun, whose Universal Geography contains the following;

For such an expedition, men of science and courage ought to be selected. They ought to be provided with all sorts of implements and stores, and with different animals, from the powers and instincts of which they may derive assistance. They should have oxen from Buenos Aires, or from the English settlements, mules from Senegal, and dromedaries from Africa or Arabia. The oxen would traverse the woods and the thickets; the mules would walk securely among rugged rocks and hilly countries; the dromedaries would cross the sandy deserts. Thus the expedition would be prepared for any kind of territory that the interior might present. Dogs also should be taken to raise game, and to discover springs of water; and it has even been proposed to take pigs, for the sake of finding out esculent roots in the soil. When no kangaroos and game are to be found the party would subsist on the flesh of their own flocks. They should be provided with a balloon for spying at a distance any serious obstacle to their progress in particular directions, and for extending the range of observations which the eye would take of such level lands as are too wide to allow any heights beyond them to come within the compass of their view.[2]

In 1839, Lieutenant-Colonel George Gawler, second Governor of South Australia, suggested that camels should be imported to work in the semi-arid regions of Australia.

The first camel arrived in Australia in 1840, ordered from the Canary Islands by the Phillips brothers of Adelaide (Henry Weston Phillips (1818-1898); George Phillips (1820-1900); G M Phillips (unknown)).[3] The Apolline, under Captain William Deane, docked at Port Adelaide in South Australia on 12 October 1840, but all but one of the camels died on the voyage. The surviving camel was named Harry.[4]

This camel, Harry, was used for inland exploration by pastoralist and explorer John Ainsworth Horrocks on his ill-fated 1846 expedition into the arid South Australian interior near Lake Torrens, in searching for new agricultural land. He became known as the 'man who was shot by his own camel'. On 1 September Horrocks was preparing to shoot a bird on the shores of Lake Dutton. His kneeling camel moved while Horrocks was reloading his gun, fatally injuring Horrocks by injuring the middle fingers of his right hand and a row of teeth.[5] Horrocks died of his wounds on 23 September in Penwortham after requesting that the camel was shot.[6]

Muslim cameleers Edit

Australia's first major inland expedition to use camels as a main form of transport was the Burke and Wills expedition in 1860. The Victorian Government imported 24 camels for the expedition.[4] The first Muslim cameleers arrived on 9 June 1860 at Port Melbourne from Kurrachee on the ship the Chinsurah,[7] to participate in the Burke and Wills expedition.[8] As described by the Victorian Exploration Expedition Committee, "the camels would be comparatively useless unless accompanied by their native drivers".[9] The cameleers on the expedition included 45-year-old Dost Mahomed, who was bitten by a bull camel losing permanent use of his right arm, and Esa (Hassam) Khan from Kalat, who fell ill near Swan Hill. They cared for the camels, loaded and unloaded equipment and provisions and located water on the expedition.[10]

From the 1860s onward small groups of cameleers were shipped in and out of Australia at three-year intervals, to service South Australia's inland pastoral industry. Carting goods and transporting wool bales by camel was a lucrative livelihood for them. As their knowledge of the Australian outback and economy increased, Muslim cameleers began their own businesses, importing and running camel trains. By 1890 the camel business was dominated by Muslim merchants and brokers, commonly referred to as "Afghans" or "Ghans", despite their origin often being British India (now Pakistan) as well as Afghanistan. They belonged to four main groups: Pashtuns, Baluchis, Punjabis, and Sindhis. At least 15,000 camels with their handlers are estimated to have come to Australia between 1870 and 1900.[11] Most of these camels were dromedaries, especially from India, including the Bikaneri war camel from Rajasthan as a riding camel, and lowland Indian camels for heavy work. Other dromedaries included the Bishari riding camel of North Africa and Arabia. A bull camel could be expected to carry up to 600 kilograms (1,300 lb), and camel strings could cover more than 25 miles per day.

Camel studs were set up in 1866, by Sir Thomas Elder and Samuel Stuckey, at Beltana and Umberatana Stations in South Australia. There was also a government stud camel farm at Londonderry, near Coolgardie in Western Australia, established in 1894.[12] These studs operated for about 50 years and provided high-class breeders for the Australian camel trade.

Camels continued to be used for inland exploration by Peter Warburton in 1873, William Christie Gosse in 1873, Ernest Giles in 1875–76, David Lindsay in 1885–1886, Thomas Elder in 1891–1892, on the Calvert Expedition in 1896–97, and by Cecil Madigan in 1939.[13] They were also used in the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line, and carried pipe sections for the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme.

The introduction of the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 and the White Australia policy made it more difficult for cameleers to enter Australia.[14]

Impact on Aboriginal people Edit

Some Aboriginal people can still recall their first sightings of camels. Pitjantjatjara man Andy Tjilari describes camping with his family as a child, when a man traveling with camels arrived in search of dingo scalps. When the initial shock wore off, Mr Tjilari describes following the camels with his family, mimicking them and talking to them. The discovery led him to assert that "this horse is ignorant".[15]

As Muslim cameleers increasingly travelled through the inland they encountered a diversity of Aboriginal groups. An exchange of skills, knowledge and goods soon developed. Some cameleers assisted Aboriginal people by carrying traditional exchange goods, including red ochre or the narcotic plant pituri, along ancient trade routes such as the Birdsville Track. The cameleers also brought new commodities such as sugar, tea, tobacco, clothing and metal tools to remote Aboriginal groups. Aboriginal people incorporated camel hair into their traditional string artefacts, and provided information on desert waters and plant resources. Some cameleers employed Aboriginal men and women to assist them on their long desert treks. This resulted in some enduring partnerships, and several marriages.[16]

From 1928 to 1933, the missionary Ernest Kramer undertook camel safaris in Central Australia with the aim of spreading the gospel. On most journeys, he employed Arrernte man Mickey Dow Dow as cameleer, guide and translator and sometimes a man called Barney. The first of Kramer’s trips was to the Musgrave Ranges and Mann Ranges, and was sponsored by the Aborigines Friends Association, which sought a report on Indigenous living conditions. According to Kramer’s biography, as the men travelled through the desert and encountered local people, they handed them boiled lollies, tea and sugar and played Jesus Loves Me on the gramophone. At night, using a ‘magic lantern projector’, Kramer showed slides of Christmas and the life of Christ. For many people, this was their first experience of Christmas and the event picturesquely established "an association between camels, gifts and Christianity that was not merely symbolic but had material reality".[17]

By the 1930s, as the cameleers became displaced by motor transport, an opportunity arose for Aboriginal people. They learnt camel-handling skills and acquired their own animals, extending their mobility and independence in a rapidly changing frontier society.[14]

Camels still regularly appear as a motif in Indigenous Australian art.