• Where Camels and Brumbies Run Wild
    Awake!—2001 | April 8

    • Built on the Camel’s Back

      For the past four decades, some outback cattlemen have echoed the complaint that a cowboy made in the book The Camel in Australia: “I have seen evidence here where 5 camels practically tore down 7 miles [10 km] of boundary fencing . . . One place they not only broke the wires but took posts and all.”

      Expensive fence lines are no match for the long legs and bulk of a determined camel. Yet, these same sturdy legs made it possible to build the lifelines that cross the parched interior of this continent.

      Imported from India in 1860, camels accompanied explorers Burke and Wills on their epic crossing of Australia from south to north. The exotic creatures became the preferred companions of early adventurers because of their superior strength and stamina. Amazingly fuel-efficient, they carried 700-pound [300 kg] loads for 500 miles [800 km] on just four gallons [15 L] of water.

      Wonderfully reliable, camels helped in hauling food and equipment to the frontier gold towns, in building the overland telegraph line from Adelaide to Darwin, and in surveying the Trans-Australian Railway connecting Sydney and Perth. Over an area of one and a half million square miles [4 million sq km], they blazed a trail that modern machines still find hard to follow.

      The domestic camel count peaked at 22,000 by 1922, but as the automobile took over, many camels were turned loose. Free to roam and reproduce, reportedly more than 200,000 now call the Australian deserts home, and some people estimate that the population will double within six years.

      Not all these camels are left to run wild though. A spokesman for the Central Australian Camel Association told Awake!: “Australia has the only disease-free camel herds in the world, and so each year a small number are exported to zoos and parks in the United States and Asia.” Local tour operators also offer visitors a chance to mount a camel’s back and rediscover Australia’s wild interior—an interior shared by other liberated beasts of burden.