• Tilli Adeane gets up close with Cairo as cameleer Burt Parker looks on. Photo by Steve Grant
SHIPS of the desert will ply the white sands of Bathers Beach today as part of the annual sunset markets.
Cairo and Ezra will team up to carry passengers along a beach that camels first trod upon more than a century ago, while disembarking to work in the goldfields.
With previous experience on Broome’s iconic Cable Beach, the lofty humpbacks took to the beach for a practice run Thursday, much to the delight of the dozen or so beachgoers.
Organiser Georgie Adeane came up with the idea after seeing camels at the Kings Square markets. She says they will take off from J-shed, along Bathers Beach and, if the tides are out, travel around the groyne and up to the fishermen’s co-op building (where Maccas used to be).
“About 120 years ago, camels entered WA via Fremantle,” she says as Pinjarra cameleer Burt Parker guides the animals with daughter Tilli Adeane.
“They were brought up to Samson House to drink from a big well there before moving on to Kalgoorlie.”
Camels and their Afghan drivers were familiar sights in the port city which even enacted by-laws to control the driving of dromedaries through the streets.
An early photograph of camels being unloaded in Fremantle can be found in the library’s local history collection and John Dowson’s book, Fremantle Port.
The first camels in Australia were imported from the Canary Islands in 1840 to perform in circuses. In 1860, the Royal Society of Victoria imported the beasts from India for the ill-fated Bourke and Wills expedition. Just two of 24 survived.
Adelaide businessman and pastoralist Thomas Elder imported 121 in 1866 to use on his sheep stations. He also supported inland expeditions, including one led by explorer Peter Egerton Warburton who crossed the Gibson Desert from Alice Springs to Roebourne in 1874.
Those camels suffered badly: “We started with seventeen camels and ended with two. The following is a list of casualties: 1 camel poisoned; 4 lost (they ran away); 3 left behind in the desert, unable to move; 7 killed for food; 2 survivors left on the De Grey’.”
Camel farms were also prominent in WA. Working camels bred in Australia were of superior quality to imports, which continued arriving from india and Pakistan until 1907. An estimated 10,000 to 12,000 camels were imported between 1860 and 1907.
Camels were used to carry pipes for the Goldfields Water Supply and supply goods to remote towns, mining camps and Aboriginal communities.
Australia also sent camels to war, the Imperial Camel Corps formed in January 1916. The estimated population of feral camels is up to 200,000, half of which are in WA, the rest in the Northern Territory, Queensland and South Australia.
by CARMELO AMALFI