The Camel & Australia

1840 - It Begins

After much deliberation, procrastination and chatter, a camel finally arrived on our far away shores in 1840. It came from the Canary Islands. I think it was a bit more good luck than good management in why it survived the trip to Adelaide. It did and it duly served time working under the Horrocks brothers research in the northern regions of South Australia.

Burke and Wills used camels in 1860 with some success. Not bad for a hopelessly disorganised and badly crewed expedition. Other explorers had used them by now with great success. Word spread rapidly about their talents in the dry parts of the world.

Then Sir Thomas Elder of Elders IXL fame arrived on the scene. He was to be the first person to introduce large numbers of selected and well bred camels. With them, he was also clever enough to see that with a camel, you needed the correct people to look after the animals. He used local handlers who had arrived from Rajasthan and Pakistan. From the early 1860s, the camel industry grew rapidly, expanding its routes and supply lines to many far away places.

Beltana Station in South Australia was the headquarters of this camel breeding operation. The Oodnadatta police ran camels for their patrols from Beltana and they were regarded as a pretty handy sort of a police force with their camels and aboriginal trackers. If you had a camel from the Beltana stud, you had the best.

The legendary RM Williams used to tell the story that when he was a young bloke - I would imagine a bit of a wild lad in those days - he out-ran the famed Oodnadatta police on his camel. Of this, he was very proud. Maybe his camels were the hand-me-downs that got through the back fence of Beltana... or did he just know his way around the bush better?

Contribution

The first camels and their handlers came from the northern regions of India in Rajasthan. Camels and handlers were loaded onto ships out of Bombay and Calcutta for the long sea journey to ports like Melbourne and Adelaide in Australia.

The success of the early Australian camel industry is largely due to these men, their work ethic and religion and how they followed their animals back and forth across the vast dry Outback. If they hadn’t come with the animals, I am sure the industry would have been nowhere near as successful as it was. They bought their knowledge, and quite often their animals, to this country to work hard and start the first herds of camels in Australia.

There is a myth in Australia that early camel handlers in this country came from Afghanistan, but it would appear that most either came from Rajasthan or Baluchistan.

The camel sure had a positive influence here. They carried for the Overland Telegraph line in 1870-1872, The Transcontinental Railway Line in 1912-1917, copper from the mines to the ports, supplies to the stations, wool wagons to the mills, and the list went on.

They were to be an ideal animal to suit the poor conditions in drought and hard times, temperatures out of this world and long distances to be covered. For 60 plus years, they where used extensively throughout the bush, going where others couldn’t and doing it on time and reliably. Then the motor car came along and the world changed, yet again.

The contribution of the camels in the pioneering days was remarkable and yet now in our modern times it is just about forgotten.

Wild Camels

Around 1920, camels were let go to the wild in there hundreds and thousands. Along the routes they once trod, and walked in the dust, loads to the brim, they now flourish within this feral world. Australia has close to 70% of its land mass classed arid. What a gift to these animals it must have been. They get fat even in tough times in Australia. This would have been a true paradise, that is until they evolved into being a pest.

Some 20,000 working camels would have been fairly active at this time of transition. That’s a pretty good bunch to start a wild herd from. Time will only tell if this was good or bad. My guess is it could be good if managed properly. Camels are a great resource that could fit the Australian landscape in more ways than one.

Australia is now classed as the only place in the world where single hump feral camels roam the deserts.

Estimates of current numbers in 2005 seem to sit at about 600,000+ feral camels in the Australian continent. There is an estimated 50,000 in the Simpson Desert alone. That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but they can be elusive to find and difficult to get out of some remote areas.

There is a rule of thumb that our national wild camel herd doubles every 8 to 10 years. In some seasons and areas it may be every 5 or 6 years. Natural causes, bad husbandry, drought and eradication programs are a few of the ways that numbers are kept down.

But if you took that herd of 20,000 camels let go to the wild in 1920 and said not quite half of those are breeders, say 8,000 breeders, apply the herd doubling exercise for every 8 years and see how many you come up with. Even if you half that, you would think we should be seeing them on Bondi Beach.

There is now a strong push to promote a viable commercial rural camel industry, based around farmed meat and milk, alongside tourism and its many other byproducts. This is most certainly the way to go: breeding large herds of domesticated camels cograzing in more marginal country with good husbandry, quality and reliability. The market is out there. We have the product and the land. Can we produce it?

Evolution

You might say there are other types of camels and yes, there are: the two-hump camel, the Bactrian, is a direct relation. In the camel world, the Bactrian is only 10% of the world population. It tends to be found in colder climates such as Mongolia and other more isolated parts of China. The Dromedary, or the single-hump camel, is found extensively throughout the warmer, sandier countries such as Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Morocco, Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia Oman, Pakistan, India, Australia and many more.

The very first camels seem to have appeared in the Eocene period in the North American region. They where quite small - 18 inches tall at this time of the evolution - but as they developed, one lot moved across the Bering land bridge into Russia, evolving into the Dromedary and the Bactrian. Others moved into South America to become the other side of their genus: the Alpaca, the Vicuna, the Llama and the Guanaco. These can be found native in many parts of South America and are considerably smaller then their Dromedary and Bactrian cousins.

Habits, Myths and Misconceptions

Now the Dromedary camel that we are talking about here all the time has a somewhat bad reputation for a lot of the wrong reasons. People conjure up images of a dirty, smelly animal that kicks, bites and spits all at the same time while doing headstands and farting. This couldn’t be further from the truth. They are an unusual animal and like anything new to us, we have to get to know and understand the beast.

Camels do spit at you, but it is that more of a slobber. They chew their cud like a true ruminate and if you get them wound up or annoyed and don’t stop, they may regurgitate their cud in a form of nervousness. Then comes the growling at you. This is a bit like the final warning before large amounts of their cud are flung to all corners of the earth with their growl attached. So they don’t just line you up and spit at you, but more of a general spray in your direction. It does smell pretty bad and its difficult to get rid of the odour! The answer here is just to back off and let the animal settle, or wear a large broad-brimmed hat.

Animals such as cattle, horses, donkeys and deer kick and so do camels. Like anything, once you understand the animals ways and habits, it is very easy to work around them. Once domesticated and handled calmly, they are not an animal to kick out. The only sneaky part about a wild camel kicking is the way it uses its front foot to deliver the strike. It can produce a very fast and nasty strike and for the untrained eye, it can be difficult to see it coming. Their foot is a soft pad, not like a horse's hoof. If you are to be kicked by either of these animals, I know the pad is softer then the hoof! In 30 years of working with all types of camels, I have been bitten twice, but not badly. This could be due to good luck. Be cautious and be prepared for the unexpected at all times. They certainly do show sometimes that they want to bite, but I feel that is quite often bluff and very rarely do they go through with it.

Camels definitely like the slow, gentle and steady approach when being handled and broken in. They are a relatively tractable animal and will domesticate very well as long as they are not too old when you take them from the wild. The big thing that people have problems with when they buy one is that they expect it to work and respond like a horse would. Put simply, they just don’t. They are a different style of animal. They love repetition and yes, you can ride them and race them, but at a pace and a style all of their own.

Steering the camel to go where you want is not overly hard to do, but they will never do it as fast and as sharp as a horse. Normal horse halters work ok, but you can’t put a bit in a camel's mouth because it is a ruminate and chews its cud. Now camels, or at least some do, have a nose peg. This is traditionally a wooden peg with a flat bottom on one end and a spike on the other.

A hole is punched, cut or seared through a certain part in the nose and the peg is then fed through the hole from the inside of the nose, with the flat bottom bit of the peg inside the nose. This then sits permanently in the nose, not dissimilar to a ring in a bulls nose. From this, string or light rope is attached to the outside of the peg and then the animal is steered or led off this one peg. It is quite a strange practice. I have not used a nose peg for 20 years and I strongly believe they are not necessary. If you need to use a nose peg to control a camel, one or two things are wrong. Maybe the animal should not be used or it needs to be trained more if you require such an abrupt form of control. There is also an underlying feeling that if you have the nose line hooked up you will be ok, which is not a good, safe approach in tricky situations.

Mind you in saying this, I have seen a few rare operators use pegs with care and understanding.

The saying is for breaking camels, “To go slow, is to go fast”.

A camel has many other myths, as in its drinking and storage of water capacity, its endurance capabilities and just what can they lift. Well for starters, a camel loaded with 200 kilo would easily have done 20 km per day every day. There were stories of big bull camels lifting well over a ton from a sitting position to up and away. They were also pretty handy at pulling wagons and actually worked in a couple of Cobb & Co coaches in the west.

Feats of endurance have been amazing. The classic example being a race between a good horse and a working camel owned by Mr Abdul Wadi. The race was to be from Bourke to Wanaaring, a distance of 180 km in northern New South Wales. The horse and the camel completed the run in daylight with the horse winning by a fairly narrow margin. Unfortunately, the horse died the next day from exhaustion. Mr Abdul turned around and rode the same camel the same distance back to Bourke the day after the race without a problem.

In 1988, in Australia’s Bicentennial year, there was a 3,300 km camel endurance race from Yulara [Ayer's Rock] to the Gold Coast. People were doing consistent distances of 100 km per day, day in day out, 35 plus hours straight travel with virtually no stopping in some sections, which were over 250 km. This turned out to be one of the toughest endurance races in the world.

Now, everyone thinks that camels drink to store water in their hump, but no, that’s not the case. Camels have the unique ability to deprive their body of moisture to a level that would kill other animals. Yet when they take a drink, they can replenish their needs and jump back very quickly to good health and wellbeing.

Some camels have been recorded at drinking 25 litres a minute when restocking water supply to their drained bodies.

Humans start dropping off the planet when we lose 15% of our body weight. Camels can lose around the 30%.

They are also very clever survivors, extracting the moisture content in the food that they consume. There’s always moisture in wild food and they seem to have it worked out on just how to use it. The length of time that a camel can go without drinking water will depend on a few things: is it a good camel type, has it been educated without water, what food is it eating, just where is it going, and what work is it doing?

They eat something like 3% to 5% of there body weight per day, consuming more trees and shrubs than grasses. In actual fact, a camel's forage overlaps with the moo cow, somewhere around 25% maximum. Camels can be co-grazed with other stock very effectively. They have also proven to be a great weed-eating machine and are actively used in controlling Prickly Acacia, Parkinsonian, Wattle and many other problem weeds across Australia.

So what’s in the hump if it doesn’t have the water? It’s the fatty part of the beast. Humans store fat all over their body, whereas camels seem to store the bulk of their excess fat in the hump. You can always tell a camel's health and wellbeing by the condition of their hump.

Racing

Racing camels in Australia is nearly as meat pie and VB stubbies as you can get. With the resurgence of camels back in the '60s and '70s, the classic Australian camel race was born in Alice Springs. It was short and sweet, but the crowd loved it. They still do to this day, coming back in their thousands.

Now, racing has spread far and wide from Alice Springs. Racing camels are appearing across the country, some are display events and others are the real deal: the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane Royal agriculture shows where display type events. In 1997, The Boulia Desert Sands changed the Australian camel racing scene. There was $25,000 prize money, longer races, microchipped camels, legal bookies, lighter jockeys and, probably for the first time, there were trained racing camels. Good competition prevailed. Drug testing was also introduced and more racing events have followed.

Australia has sold only a small number of potential racing camels to Middle Eastern countries. Good world-class racing camels have their origins in places like Sudan or Somalia, and now, with many years of high-tech research, controlled breeding programs and good racing competition, these genetics will win a few more races. These camels are much finer-boned and have lankier bodies, whereas Australian camels are much more thick set.

The Gulf is the elite camel racing capital of the world, particularly in the UAE Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Three, six, eight and ten kilometre races are run. Competition is fierce and the prizes are amazing. On a big weekend at the height of the season, it is nothing to see 20 or 30 brand new cars making up the weekend's prizes. Mechanical jockeys are now used instead of young boys. There are now no human rights problems and everyone is happy. I would doubt very much that Australian camels could ever compete with UAE animals in their top level of competition. Maybe in the shorter 400 metre sprints, we might succeed: The Quarter Mile Flyer World Cup of camel racing. It could be held in the United Arab Emirates. We would be in with a chance at this spectacular event. Goodwill would abound with endless business opportunities.

Tourism

For a long time, there has been, and to some extent there still is, a good camel trekking industry. Insurance has given trekking a bit of a bad time and a lot of operators have ceased. However, others such as Cable Beach in north Western Australia are doing a booming trade.

You can trek across the Simpson Desert with camels or wander across the Tanami. Some people walk east to west and others have hitched up their wagons and walked the perimeter of this large island. At any given time, there are people carrying out feats of trekking. Some big, and some just a walk in the park, but the spirit of adventure is still there and powering along.

Breeding

Now mating camels is something to talk about. This experience in life is something no-one should miss. It can be quite rough and very noisy.

The males come into season or "rut" and become extremely bad mannered and unpredictable. They are hostile to each other and like to keep a firm control over their harem in the wild. Males in full rut grind their teeth constantly, sweat from glands behind their ears, urinate on their tail and flick it all up the back of their hump. They also have a fleshy bag, or it’s dulaa, that comes out of their mouth in the form of an air-filled balloon. It is like an extension of their soft palate underneath their tongue.

It's not a pretty sight when this goes on, but the bull camel sure thinks he is gorgeous and so does the female, from all accounts. The camel is an induced ovulator, so the female must mate once first to bring her in to ovulation. Generally, the second service will be successful. The act of copulation may take 10 to 15 minutes.

In the artificial insemination world of camel reproduction, male semen can be injected into the muscle tissue of the female and this will do the trick for the ovulation to start.

Gestation is a long 13 months and twins are very, very rare. In the wild, the dominate bull will run with 9 to 12 cows, with various calves and some older off spring tagging along.

Then there are bull herds that run by themselves. Every now and then, a stranger bull will venture into a harem to try and win the rights to the group. What follows is a real tussle, with the winner taking all. The loser goes back to either a life of solitude in the sand dunes or the old male herd.

In the wild, breeding numbers are less productive. Problems occur quite often. Calves will be killed as other males try to mate too early with the mother. A cow will not fall pregnant with a calf at foot.

The bull cow ratio is generally larger in the wild. At times, bulls will pack rape the younger cows before they are ready to produce offspring.

When calves are born, the cows will move away from the herd to give birth safely. It doesn’t take them long to get their 25 to 30 kilo all-legs body up and walking. Dingoes are a problem at birth and one would imagine many young camels are lost where the dogs are plentiful.

The ones that survive the rigours of being a wild camel can expect to live to a ripe old age of 30 or 40+ years. The cows will produce calves until they are 30 years old.

• Do they harm the environment?
• Should we farm them in Australia?
• Should we eradicate them as a feral animal?
• Why not do the lot and be productive at the same time?
• Does Australia have the spirit?

Camels are remarkable animals that not many people have been fortunate enough to work with. It is said, “a camel was a horse designed by a committee”. For once, I have seen a productive and useful committee.

Paddy McHugh Tours Treks & Expeditions to Outback Locations in Australia Western Desert - Simpson Desert - Cape York - Luxury Adventure Tours Phone (07) 4721 6720 ... Mobile: 0427216720 ... Email: paddy@paddymchugh.com