by David Mason
The camels were wild and wild eyed. At up to 1000 kilograms of humped four-legged muscle they squirted skinny cylinders of green shit and at every opportunity kicked, gaped and spat their cud. I loved them instantly. I loved their sweet smell of greasy wool, their grace and their arrogance in an environment of which they knew nothing. Over the next few weeks Jim and I worked the camels through the yards, touched them, spoke to them and fed them. During that period too I named the camels I thought I wanted: Kashgar, Chloe and Kabul.
Kabul was a male and I wondered if he would be suited to the trip I was planning. After all, my reading told me that male camels were little short of trouble. I knew that male camels became aggressive and violent around shecamels in the rutting season. They would charge and challenge other males, sometimes killing competitors and certainly trampling anything in their way. Unfortunately for me the rutting season was during autumn and winter, a large slice of the eight months I planned to be walking across the continent.
Nevertheless, I thought he was different from all the other camels. Kabul was aloof, independent and seemingly untroubled by the newness around him. I wanted him on my team. I wanted to make him my friend and my lead camel. In the end, I was right.
Paddy arrived back at Dajarra a week or so before the trek along the eastern edge of the Simpson Desert. He was less than 170 centimetres, slim with wild, shoulder length sun-bleached hair, the whites of his eyes bloodshot from too long blinking in the sun and the dust. Though he was busy in the coordination of the forthcoming trip, he patiently showed me how to tie a camel down and put on a headstall so a lead rope could be attached. He introduced me to different saddles and instructed me on how to put a saddle on a camel’s back.
With a group of camels and paying customers like me we walked and rode from Dajarra to the south-west, through Glenormiston cattle station, and finally to the township of Bedourie. My camels were tense and often lifted their noses to scents from the desert. I thought the scents included other camels and freedom, so at night I tied them off to trees with climbing rope four or five metres in length. It meant they could feed at night and in the dark I left the comfort of my swag, patted and talked to them in a low voice, and double and triple-checked the bowline knots.
The trip to the Simpson Desert’s edge woke in me a passion for the desert with its giant blue dome of sky and dunes of rippled red sand. It also taught me that though I knew a little about camels there was a lot, one hell of a lot, left to learn. At the end of the trip Paddy promised to freight the camels to me in Canberra while I undertook the search for saddle-makers and sponsors.
In 1997 the camels arrived in Canberra and were agisted on a property on the northern edge of the suburban fringe. People driving to work listening to the news on their radios could watch the fluid movements of camel necks as their bodies glided across the paddocks in search of grazing. Kabul, Chloe and Kashgar adapted quickly to the change of environment, and in an old utility that was all I could afford I drove to the camels every dawn and dusk, trying to balance the demands of my job as a government lawyer with the needs of the camels. I checked their water, patted, stroked and brushed camel coats, and fed them lucerne hay and a mix of pollard and molasses. All through the winter and into the spring of 1997 I planned the route. I rolled out maps, checked stock routes, chased up sponsors who seemed vaguely interested (and many who were not) and tried to reassure myself that the little money I had would be enough to carry me through the next year.
The gear began to arrive. I had maps covering my route across Australia. I designed a swag and had it made with heavy-duty rip-stop canvas. The camel saddles I measured up, running tapes around camel bellies like a couturier, and sent the numbers off to a saddler in Alice Springs. I wrote out inventories of the equipment I needed, including food, camel medical kit, ropes and an array of spares. I made up my mind we would leave early next year.
In that Christmas of 1997 I must have been a very difficult person to be around and certainly to live with. After four years the plan was coming together and its different parts, from National Park permits to rifle licences, were like delicate threads woven carefully into the plan to give it form. I had to be very careful not to snap or forget one of those threads. It made me obsessive about details, obsessive about the expedition.
On my final day at work my boss took me into his office and with a wave of his hand directed I sit in a chair opposite his desk. He sat down, the desk between us. In the low, patient, measured tones of a middle ranking public servant concerned about his career, he said that I needed to rethink my future in the law and the future of my job. In the silence punctuated by the arrival of an email, I was less than pleased. Though he had known of my plans for two years, he had waited till then, the day of my departure from the office, to tell me. For a moment it was just something else to worry about. He was a good lawyer but looking into the dull opaqueness of his eyes I knew he and I had little in common; even less so now. I would not be making money for eight months and knew that I would have to find a job on my return. I looked at him with what I thought was grave concern and told him I would indeed be thinking very seriously about my future. I stood up to shake his hand. He turned his back and, speaking to a bookshelf, reminded me to hand in my identity pass. Through three doors, an elevator descent and the wave of a security guard, I walked outside into the sunshine.
As far as I was concerned, there were more important and pressing matters. There was a castration to be done. I was sure that my decision to keep Kabul had been the right one, but all the camel hormones coursing around his body made him difficult and perhaps even unreliable, particularly in winter, the rutting season. I declined to do the slicing myself so I sought the local vet. Though Ken was a horse rather than camel expert, we were on first-name terms and I thought my payments had funded at least one of his children through an exclusive school.
On Ken’s arrival at the paddock I tied Kabul down. This was done by having him drop into the camel recumbent position, front legs folded parallel to his chest and hind legs under his belly. The lead rope of 10 millimetre climbing rope knotted at his headstall was tied round his right forward leg and then taken over the base of his neck to the left forward leg. Without breaking the climbing rope there was no way he could get up on his front legs. I tied down his hind legs as well, to make sure he could not move at all during the proceedings.
Before the sharp-blade work, Ken wanted to ensure Kabul would feel very little. To that end, Ken asked me how much Kabul weighed. I said at least 800 kilograms and in response Ken put together a cocktail of drugs. The injection went into Kabul’s neck and in a few minutes his eyelids grew heavy and spittle began to drip from a lower lip that sagged away from his teeth. Even so, when Ken moved to Kabul’s rear, Kabul remained very interested, his head turning to keep Ken in view.
I knelt in front of Kabul and scratched in the coarse black curls behind his ears. I told him I loved him and that this little procedure was for the best – though this last was clearly more for me than him. Meanwhile Ken set out his tool kit and was soon brandishing a shiny blade. With a ‘Hang on, that’s it … Good boy,’ and a, ‘Jesus they’re big,’ the job was done. Kabul barely moved and there were tears in my eyes.
I untied his hind legs and then the ropes at the front so that he could stand and move. The idea was that as long as he continued to move the site would drain and heal quickly and cleanly. I got Kabul to his feet and, as he swayed groggily away, Ken assured me everything had gone well and I should not expect any complications. As we stood watching Kabul lumber away two waiting crows saw their chance. Sharp beaks speared bloody eggs, wings flapped and in their turn the crows lurched, swayed and lumbered away.
In the hope of securing more sponsorship, I approached Dick Smith to be the Patron of the Expedition. He generously agreed and in February 1998 the trip was launched on the lawns of Old Parliament House in Canberra. I spoke with representatives of the Aboriginal Embassy on the site who graciously agreed to the
launch and attendant media. They were very supportive when they heard the expedition was to raise money for the Fred Hollows Foundation. To make the launch a real attraction I brought Kashgar to the lawns in a horse float. Unloaded, her pads on the manicured green grass, she behaved like a princess. After Dick Smith had given a short speech, she let me walk her around the fountains for the media to take photographs of the two of us.
The local paper carried a picture of us on page three while the rest of the media stayed away. I had done all I could. A few days later camels, gear and I headed north.
With Dick Smith, patron, and Kashgar in front of Old Parliament House in Canberra.
1 To the North
Whatever you can do, or dream you can … begin it.
Goethe, 1835
On the day I left Canberra the westerly breeze blew dry on my cheeks. I leaned on the long steel gate to the paddock that, in early March, stretched away bleached-brown and dusty. Lifting my head, I looked across to the truck where shaded faces under hats waited watching me, then beyond to the blue-green haze of the Brindabella Range in the west. In the cloudless sky, crows circled above the stands of grey-green trees. Three camels stood motionless, their long faces turned to me without a blink of their long-lashed eyes.
Down by the truck, Richard, one of Canberra’s few camel men, stood with his hands on his hips. His normally warm open face was marked by a dark shadow of concern. As I walked to the group he said, ‘You’ll be right.’ He sounded more optimistic than he looked or I felt.
Cliff and his son Dan were leaning against the side of their open-top horse truck nursing cigarettes. They watched me closely from under their wide-brimmed Akubra hats. Cliff met my gaze with a brighter eye than usual. He leaned forward, cocked his torso over his left leg to ease his lower back, damaged from falling from too many horses, and asked, ‘Get started?’ In answer to his father’s question, from between index finger and thumb, Dan dropped the end of his cigarette to the ground. The ball of his R.M. Williams boot ended the discussion.
We let down the ramp of the horse truck and tied off long ropes from the rear corners of the truck, using the ropes to make a race. I took up a lead rope and walked each of the three camels onto the tray. As the camels moved up the ramp of the truck the ropes were moved closer together so that they were eventually crossed behind. Each camel was tied off to a corner, with room to stand up and to sit down on the straw spread on the wooden tray.
First was Kashgar, my little princess, tied off into the driver’s side corner, closest to the cab. Next was Kabul, and finally Chloe, who I had dubbed ‘Queen of the Desert’. She watched with a disdainful curl of her lip. It took time and protestations of undying love to get her onto the truck. Finally though, with Chloe on board, we secured the tailgate and loaded the last of the gear. Among it all were steel-framed winged saddles from Alice Springs, blankets, swag, tin boxes, jerry cans, ropes, while a plastic tube of maps was secured behind the cab. I shook Richard’s hand and thanked him for his help.
A key turned, pistons pumped and a cloud of black-blue smoke billowed from the exhaust. A grinding of gears and we turned out of the brown dust and onto the sticky black tarmac of the road north. At last.
With the drive ahead of us, I had some time to think. Across the front seat of the car following the camel truck, I watched Amber again. I wondered if we could ever really know another person. Though we loved each other there were doubts, uncertainties and fears. I doubted she would ever understand what drove me. Sometimes she laughed at what I did, made fun of camels and questioned whether this adventure was really worthwhile. Perhaps she feared what she could never understand in me. Maybe she loved this part of me, but she also wanted to change it, to give her life and future some certainty from my obsession and departures.
How to explain to someone who did not understand that it was not a question of worthwhile, or even good or bad? It was just something that had to be done, a part of myself that could not be denied. I was going away and I would miss her. I would miss her lustrous hair, the midnight waves and ringlets that hung to her shoulders, a legacy of her Spanish grandmother. I would miss too the freckles on her cheeks and the warmth in her eyes.
Later that day I agreed to meet the truck at a place on the map called Wattle Flat, just past Bathurst on the road to Mudgee, before dawn the following day. Amber and I stayed in a motel in town and over dinner shared silences that were too long.
Next day, in the early morning light, I checked the camels. I murmured each name and long-lashed wet eyes turned and glistened in greeting, or was it accusation? Their dew-damp sweet camel fragrance was a reminder that they did not belong in a truck but in open places where the sky was not a canvas tarpaulin but a bright, blue ceiling. They met the sound of the truck’s revving engine with fragranced sighs.
Amber and I followed north, out of the burnt brown plains and into country where the summer had not dissolved or bleached the land of colour. We passed through Glen Innes and later that day stopped at Goondiwindi on the Queensland border, a place named after the local Aboriginal language that meant ‘the resting place of birds’. I thought about Australia’s Federation in 1901 – Goondiwindi was one of the few border crossings from New South Wales into Queensland. The old Customs House is now a tourist attraction.
We pulled up behind the truck at the white-gloss weatherboard quarantine station nestled under a crown of red-petalled frangipani. I met Cliff just outside the flyscreen door of the building. He had been dealing with bureaucracy and said in his darkest voice, ‘Paperwork crap.’ According to the blustering whitecoated inspector who followed Cliff outside, there was ‘No way bloody camels are getting through on my shift.’ His face was cherry pink, beads of moisture collected on his top lip and his chin was greasy. Cliff gently shook his head. I did not want Goondiwindi to be the resting place of camels.
In the weeks prior to leaving Canberra I made many calls to the agricultural and quarantine authorities in New South Wales and Queensland. I believed I had all the necessary paperwork so I followed the inspector inside to the airconditioned cool and walls official off-white. It soon became clear that because camels were not cattle, horses or sheep, they were too hard to deal with. According to this inspector there were no guidelines or procedures for him to follow. As he shook his head I imagined having to camp near the quarantine station, unload the camels, and spend days trying to reach someone in authority who could make a decision. Despite the artificial chill I felt a bead of sweat slowly trace a course between my shoulder blades.
Salvation for us came in the form of another inspector in the station. She looked at her colleague, at me, the papers in my hand, and then out a window at the camels waiting patiently in the back of the truck. She picked up the phone and over the line we had our permission to go north. All it took then was the flashing light of the photocopier to capture our information and we were on our way.
We crossed the border into Queensland to bountiful green and a growing humidity. At last in Queensland we were not far from where I wanted to leave the camels. They had endured enough that day and I wanted them off the truck as soon as possible.
So we continued north to Dalby, on Queensland’s Darling Downs, on the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range. The region was named after the then Governor of New South Wales, Ralph Darling, by the explorer Allan Cunningham, whose path I was to follow or cross a number of times on my walk. We arrived at Dalby just as the heat of the day gave way to the evening cool. A short drive beyond Dalby and just off the Kingaroy road was a cattle feedlot named Aronui. The cattle fed here were destined for Australian and Japanese supermarket shelves. The grounds were green and mowed; the parts of the fences that could be were painted white gloss or were otherwise well strained; the trees and bushes were trimmed and well watered. Even so, there was no fragrance of frangipani that lined much of the garden, nor of eucalypt that surrounded the property. Instead, the air hung heavy with the scent of sweet shit and cattle feed. A haze of rich
dark dust hung over the yards as fat, shiny coated horses under riders quietly and efficiently worked the cattle through the yards.
I met an Englishman named Charlie who had adopted Australian ‘bush attire’ of tight blue jeans, brown braided kangaroo leather belt, pale blue shirt and brown R.M. Williams boots. He worked at the feedlot and led me to a small office where tests were carried out on the feed. He said I could leave my saddles and other gear in the room for as long as I needed.
While I was busy organising where gear could be stored, Cliff had taken matters in hand. He backed the truck up to a pile of dirt close to the yards, dropped the ramp of the truck, and began to walk the camels off the tray. I arrived just as he began to coax Kabul down the ramp. As usual Chloe proved to be the trickiest, deciding at the last moment to dance a nervous camel jig. She put one leg off the ramp and I held my breath.
For a moment I had a vision of a snapped bone and a jagged accusing femur that would have her screaming in pain. Instead, Chloe blew out her cheeks in disapproval at her less than graceful dismount. Once unloaded she, Kabul and Kashgar huddled together, nervous at their changed environment, its different sounds and smells. I led them into yards where white porcelain full water troughs and an enormous bale of hay awaited them. I went back to the truck.
I scribbled a cheque and presented it to Cliff. I said goodbye to him and Dan, thanking them for their help and the care with which they handled the camels. I thought his look said, ‘Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’ But all Cliff said was, ‘No worries, hope she’ll be ‘right. Camels look a bit green to me.’ Our hands joined at the palms to conclude our business. I felt the fingers, bony and hard, the skin rough and horny, close around my hand, and under his bushy brow I’m sure his eyes were wetter than usual.
