Interesting story. T lay the telegraph line across the desert from north to
south, in the later 1800's, they brought in Afghans with camel teams. It's when
Alice Springs was founded as a supply station. When the job was finished, the
Afghans were promptly sent packing back home with wages and a pat on the back,
but they just turned the camels loose. Now there's over a million of the feral
buggers out there and they keep trashing small desert towns looking for food in
dry times.
The north-south train, Adelaide to Darwin, is called The Ghan after them - one
of the more interesting train rides in the world.
The camels are such pure stock that occasionally they are captured and exported
live back to Saudi as breeding stock. Some people have tried setting up meat
export to the Middle East but that's fraught with difficulty (halal
slaughtering in remote areas, for instance). Camel meat isn't bad either - a
bit like gamey beef but not as tough as water buffalo (another pest we did get
on top of)..
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.soultheft.com
Publisher: The SLR Compendium - http://www.blurb.com/books/3732813
On 15/01/2013, at 8:16 PM, Chris Barker wrote:
> Where did the camels come from? Some entrepreneur with an eye to the main
> chance, perhaps?
--
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