Cameleers of the West - Patricia Coates, Author of

Cameleers of the West
In the decades to come, from those foreign lands under British control,
camels and cameleers are brought to work, on the laying of the Overland Telegraph line,
the erection of the Rabbit-proof fence, and the cartage of water, food, railway sleepers,
machinery and building equipment to the inland. Such is their success in the cartage
business that they soon prove a serious threat to teamsters and their bullock teams. After
all, they can do in twelve days what a bullock team takes five weeks to achieve. There is
talk about “Afghan Invasion”. Such is the unrest that in 1901, the Federal Immigration
Act is passed by the new Parliament to establish the “White Australia” policy which
effectively restricts the customary migration of the Afghan cameleers in their search for
work. Nature has other ideas, however, and during the Federation Drought, for a while at
least, camel teams are once more in great demand in the drought stricken interior.
In a land of opportunities, some Afghans become self-employed. One such man is
Mohammed Allum who, in Cloncurry, buys a new camel team, and opens grocery stores in
Cloncurry and Duchess. Since the 1880’s, the Afghans have been transporting copper and
tin for the miners of the area. By the late 1890’s, some two hundred cameleers and two
thousand camels travel on the many tracks, too rough for wagons. In the mining towns of
Duchess, Rosebud, Urquhart Siding, Butru, and in the ports of Burketown and Normanton,
Ghan towns are born.
The Mosque at Cloncurry’s Ghan Town, all disappeared
They come from Baluchistan, Sind, Kashmir, Punjab, India
and Afghanistan. They appear exotic in their turban, long flowing dress or baggy trousers,
and their heavy jewellery. They don’t drink alcohol, but use narcotic drugs, marihuana,
hashish, opium, on a regular basis, as they believe in their medicinal properties. They
butcher their meat according to the strict stipulation of their religion. Speaking in a foreign
tongue, five times a day, they kneel towards Mecca, and, tenaciously, pray to God. Aliens
in their adopted land, they often are isolated from European communities. Nevertheless,
they are known to show great hospitality to drovers, prospectors and travellers, as they
readily share their meal near their camp fire. To the western towns of Charleville,
Cunnamulla, Burketown, Normanton, Duchess, Boulia, Cloncurry, and more, they come
with their camels, those men we call “Afghans”, and for more than half a century, play a
vital role in the opening of the Matilda Country to the Europeans.
1860: the Burke and Wills expedition will open the ‘land beyond’, it is
hoped. Twenty-four dromedaries are brought from Karachi. The expedition proves
disastrous, but the camels have shown an easy adaptation to the rugged outback landscape.
Able to draw moisture from their body tissues and to recycle their own urine, the animals
can survive some ten to twelve days without water, and thrive on saltbush and mulga,
native plants of the Australian Outback.
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The largest Ghan town in Western Queensland is at Cloncurry.
There, on the western side, near the junction of the Anabranch and Coppermine
Creek, a town of slab-huts or corrugated iron shanties is soon home to the cameleers.
Ironically, it is called Chinatown, as many Chinese live there too, working their market
gardens. The Cloncurry Ghan town has its own “Pink House”, where ‘girls’, mostly
Japanese and Chinese, offer their services for 10 shillings. A rather colourful personality, a
Hindu called Hakim Ranjindah Singh, supplies medical treatment from his ‘consulting
room’ of corrugated iron.
There is also the Mosque. There, Mullah Syid O’mar, “The Bishop” to the local
white population, resides in the small building of corrugated iron and timber. With its
verandah shaded by grape vines, the worshippers congregate in the single room, with its
burning incense and its vivid carpets.
The arrival of the Great Northern Railway Line, and the collapse of the mining
industry, finally brings the Afghans to the end of their role as cameleers. Many eke out a
precarious life as hawkers, or become shop keepers.
One of the last cameleers, Mahomet Drim, well known for his splendid market
garden, will die of starvation and senility in 1947. The final page of the Afghan history of
Cloncurry is written in 1983, when Tipo Cummings, who had come to Cloncurry with the
camel teams at the age of seventeen, dies of miner’s asthma. By then, sadly, the Mosque
has long gone, the gardens have long withered and died away… Thus closes a colourful
chapter of our History.
Today, camels are roaming free in the arid West. In Cloncurry, the graves of
Afghan camel train drivers and that of Syid O’Mar remain in the northwest corner of the
cemetery. They all face to the Mecca, so far away…