Camel Ride!
Another day of driving
Arriving in Adelaide
Distance: 410km
Total Distance:
Today started with me first ever camel ride! We had an option to do this at Uluru, but everyone informs us that this is just a plod around their paddock. Instead we were in for a wee trek around part of one of the world's largest cattle stations.
Our guides have been catching, training, and riding camels for years. They have done trips just with camels but also have a wagon that the camels can pull along. They once used this for about 2 months to get from Uluru to their present location. They hope to one day do a journey encompassing all of the different deserts in Australia- there are about 7-8 though they're all connected.
Supposedly there are more camels in Australia than the Middle East. The count is always an estimate though, for 500,000 up to 2 million. Some fear their ecological impact, being able to survive better than nearly any other mammal without water and able to eat virtually any form of vegetation. This could be as big a problem, if not bigger, than the rabbits, demolishing ecosystems and thus local fauna as well as flora.
Some people have taken to capturing the wild ones. Only around 1 in 25 are fit to train for work, the rest being too wild. The rest can be shipped to the Middle East where they might be used for breeding or potentially eaten. Yep, camel meats a thing. However why use your own good camels? In some parts camels are a measure of a person's wealth- like cattle to the Zulus or house values to Westerners. Turn up in the Middle East with a few thousand Aussie camels- you're effectively a millionaire. But your camels have no pedigree and will mostly be untrainable. Hence, their uses are limited to breeding and meat.
These were the better ones though. Not perfectly trained many of them are rescues. They haven't all had great lives and some took time to train down from bad habits learnt in bad homes. They're now good enough to let novices such as part of our group on. 5 of us signed up and we gathered at 7am. The camels are tethered in a line, tails tied to noses, in a traditional manner. Our front one, mine, was lead by one guide whilst our other was at the side with advice, stories, and on hand to help.
They're big animals and smarter than horses- more on par with cattle. I guess for most people that difference is negligible (and all the horse people will argue I'm wrong), but it does make a difference. As well as learning like horses they'll also hold grudges for a long time waiting to bring about revenge when they want. They remember far better and can reason more. They're not flighty like horses- they will fight an aggressor, and think about how they want to fight.
We were led down a rough path at the back of the homestead, across a dry stream, through the sparse bush, a few more dry streams, and around the local area. The camels move each side of their body alternately, moving both front and back feet at the same time. This gives the swaying motion which helped give them the name 'ships of the desert'. Being trained as pack animals, primarily, not steeds, the control was entirely out of my hands- they just follow each other. So I just stayed up there, far higher than on a horse, and looked out on to the surrounding landscape.
After camel time it was more driving time.
I read and slept.
Eventually we got to the Adelaide! We were back in a city! More people than we'd seen in all of the last week crossed roads before us. There was this weird wet stuff coming out of the sky. And there were other vehicles!
Nothing like the desert.
We were finally out.
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