Okay, so for this deep dive, I want to start
with a little mental edit. If you can, just picture
the Australian outback, late 19th century, the
frontier era. What's the image that pops into
your head? I think for most people, it's, you
know, the classic archetype. You're picturing
a drover on horseback, a swag man, probably endless
flocks of sheep. That classic red dirt landscape,
very Anglo -centric. Exactly. It's the man from
Snowy River image, a very rugged... individualist
kind of picture. Right. But what if I told you
that image is missing maybe the single most critical
piece of the puzzle? What if instead of a horse,
the real engine of that supply chain was a long
train of camels and the men walking beside them
weren't wearing a Cobra hats, but turbans. And
at sunset, they'd stop, unroll prayer mats and
face Mecca right there in the middle of the desert.
It just creates a complete different texture
to the history, doesn't it? It reframes the whole
story. That is exactly what we are unpacking
today. We're doing a deep dive into the Afghan
cameleers. We're talking about, what, roughly
3 ,000 men who arrived in Australia between the
1860s and the 1930s. And our mission here is
to really understand how this group became the
literal backbone of the Australian inland economy.
And backbone is not an exaggeration. Not at all.
Before cars, before the train lines really pushed
deep into the interior, these men and their animals
were the only thing connecting the continent.
They were the fiber optic cables of the 19th
century. And yet, and this is the tension we
see in all the source material, their legacy
was just... It was systematically obscured, written
out of the popular history. So today we're pulling
from historical records, logistics data and personal
biographies to figure out who these men were,
how they engineered the infrastructure Australia
relies on today, and I think crucially, why they
were treated the way they were. So let's start
with the basics, the identity. We call them the
Afghan cameleers or the guns. But looking at
the notes, that name is. a bit misleading. It
is. It's a classic case of colonial shorthand.
The British colonists just tended to group people
together based on appearance or, you know, the
general direction they came from. So they weren't
all from Afghanistan. No, not at all. Some were,
but the demographic data shows a much more complex
picture. The majority actually came from the
western parts of British India. So we're talking
modern day Pakistan. Exactly. A huge number of
men from Balochistan and the northwest frontier
province. So while Afghan was the catch -all
term, ethnically you had Pashtuns, Punjabis,
Balochs, Sindhis. And the records even show smaller
numbers from much further afield. Egypt, Turkey,
Persia. It was incredibly diverse. But there
was one unifying factor for most of them. They
were Muslim. Yes. Most were Muslim. And that
is a crucial detail. Their arrival established
the first permanent link between Islam and the
Australian interior. They weren't just bringing
labor. They were bringing a whole culture with
them. Okay, so let's look at the timeline. When
does this all really kick off? There were some
early experiments in the 1830s and 40s, but the
data really points to 1860 as the inflection
point. That's when the major influx begins, and
it was driven by pure necessity. The Burke and
Wills Expedition. The Burke and Wills Expedition.
The organizers looked at the desert they were
trying to cross and realized horses simply couldn't
cut it. They needed a logistics solution that
matched the terrain. So they imported camels,
and just as importantly, they imported the men
who knew how to handle them. And that kicked
off a system. Men were shipped in, usually on
three -year contracts. I want to pause on that
detail. Three -year contracts, that creates a
very specific kind of social dynamic, right?
It absolutely did. It created this demographic
that was almost entirely male. They usually left
their families behind. They arrived alone. The
goal was purely economic. Come here, work hard,
send money home, and eventually leave. Though
eventually leaving wasn't always how it worked
out. No, it wasn't. But before we get to that,
let's just drill down into the why camels part.
From a biological perspective, was the difference
between a horse and a camel really that stark?
Oh, it was night and day. The Australian interior
is one of the harshest environments on Earth.
A horse is a beast of burden, sure, but it's
high maintenance. It needs gallons of water regularly.
It needs good feed. In a desert crossing, a horse
is a liability. A huge liability. If the water
hole is dry, your transport engine literally
dies. A camel, on the other hand, is designed
for exactly that scenario. A ship of the desert.
Precisely. They can go weeks without water if
they have to. And it's also about their feet.
A horse's hooves just cut into the sand. Camels
have those sauced spreading pads they float over
it. Before the combustion engine, the camel was
the only heavy transport technology that worked.
So what were they actually hauling? Everything.
They were hauling everything required to build
a nation. Massive wool bales from remote stations
back to the railheads. Heavy mining machinery
out to the gold fields. I was reading about the
Overland Telegraph line. That seems like a monumental
task. It cannot be overstated. The telegraph
line was the internet of its day. It connected
Australia to the world. The cameliers hauled
the poles, the wire, the insulators, the supplies
for the workers across thousands of kilometers
of nothing. Without them, that project would
have been, what, maybe impossible. Infinitely
harder, at the very least. It's interesting,
though, looking at the learning curve, the notes
mention the very first camel in Australia, a
creature named Harry. And it didn't go well.
Ah, yes. Poor Harry. It's a bit of a dark anecdote,
but it shows the early friction. Harry arrived
in 1840. By 1846, he's on an expedition with
an explorer named John Horrocks. And Harry had
some behavioral issues. You could say that. The
account says that while Horrocks was loading
a gun, Harry lurched or snapped at him. The gun
went off. Horrocks was shot and eventually died
from the wound. And the camel. They executed
him. Harry got the death penalty. A tragic, almost
absurd start. But the industry clearly moved
past that. You get these essential figures like
Das Mohammed, who is with Burke and Wills, or
Mohammed Sale. Exactly. The explorers get the
statues, but the cameleers were the ones keeping
them alive, finding water, managing the whole
operation. They were the experts in the room.
And by the turn of the century, this was big
business. We see the rise of Muslim entrepreneurs.
This is where the economic agency really shifts.
You get men like Fazli Ahmed and Faiz Mohammed.
They weren't just drivers. They were logistics
moguls. They owned the camel trains. They controlled
the supply lines for the entire outback. The
Amazon delivery of the 1890s. That's it. If you
wanted something moved in the interior, you dealt
with them. So with all the success, where did
they live? Did they integrate into the European
settlements? Generally, no. The sources describe
a pattern of segregation. They lived in specific
communities on the outskirts of towns, which
became known as Gantowns. Gantowns. Yes. You'd
find them near places like Udinadada or Maree.
Maree in South Australia is a really interesting
case. It was nicknamed Little Asia or Little
Afghanistan. Little Asia in the middle of the
desert. That implies a real cultural density.
It was a hub. Yeah. And because they were there
for long periods, they built their own infrastructure.
specifically religious infrastructure. They built
Australia's first mosques. The notes mention
a simple mud and tin structure in Murray as early
as 1861. That was a first. But then you get the
Great Mosque of Adelaide in 1888, which is this
beautiful structure that's still in use today,
and the Perth Mosque in 1905. They were building
for permanence. There's another social layer
here that I found really compelling, their relationship
with indigenous Australians. Yes, this is a very
positive aspect that comes through in the source
material. It suggests the relationship between
the Cameliers and Aboriginal Australians was
often much more respectful than what you saw
with European settlers. What was driving that
difference? Well, part of it was shared marginalization.
Neither group was white, but it was cultural
too. Intermarriage was quite common. Many cameleers
married Aboriginal women. And the oral histories
from descendants today suggest these were seen
as honorable unions. Exactly. It stands in pretty
stark contrast to the violence and exploitation
happening elsewhere on the frontier. It created
this unique demographic blend, a true melting
pot in the desert. So we have this thriving economy,
essential infrastructure, but then... The political
climate shifts. The white Australia sentiment
is growing. How did that hit the Kamloirs? It
hit them with devastating force. You can track
it in the newspapers. During droughts, they were
hailed as saviors. They saved towns like Kunamula
from starvation because horses just couldn't
make the trip. They were indispensable. But once
the emergency passed... The narrative flipped.
They became cheap labor curses, economic competitors
to the white bullock drivers. And in that era,
economic anxiety always turned into racial legislation.
We see laws passed in 1895 in Western Australia
banning them from mining. And they justified
it with fabrications. They accused the cameleers
of polluting water holes, which the historical
record shows just wasn't true. It was a convenient
lie to demonize them. And then comes the big
one, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901.
This was the legal backbone of the white Australia
policy. For the cameleers, it was catastrophic.
It made naturalization, becoming a citizen...
impossible for many of them. So you could live
there for 30 years, build the country's infrastructure
and still not be a citizen. Okay. And it had
a trap door. If they went home to visit family,
the act could be used to stop them from reentering
Australia. It trapped them. The case study of
Abdul Wade really puts a human face on this.
Oh, it's heartbreaking. He did everything right
by the standards of the time. He was a huge success.
He owned a massive camel station. He was wealthy.
He assimilated. He dressed in European clothes,
sent his kids to private schools. He even offered
his entire stock of camels to the government
for World War I. He tried to be a patriot, but
it didn't matter. The sources show he was ridiculed
in the press, marginalized by business interests.
They attacked him because he was successful.
Eventually, he was forced to sell up and leave.
That pressure cooker environment eventually boiled
over. The Battle of Broken Hill in 1915. That's
the extreme end of the persecution. Two men,
Mullah Abdullah and Gulbacha Mohammed, opened
fire on a picnic train. They killed four people
before being killed themselves. Shocking event.
It was horrific. But the archives provide context.
Mullah Abdullah wasn't just some random attacker.
He was an ice cream vendor who had been repeatedly
fined, harassed, and marginalized by local authorities.
It doesn't justify it, but it illustrates the
desperate corner these men were backed into.
So you have the legislative attacks, the social
racism, but technology was really the final blow,
wasn't it? That was the inevitable end. By the
1920s and 30s, you get the truck. The Ford truck
finally catches up to the camel. Yep. The truck
doesn't need to rest, it doesn't need water,
and it carries more. The camel trains became
obsolete almost overnight. Which leads to this
really strange chapter in Australian environmental
history. What happened to all the camels? Well,
the police instructions were brutal. They were
often ordered to shoot the animals. Damn them,
after everything. That was the order. But many
of the cameleers refused. These animals were
their companions. So instead of shooting them,
they just opened the gates. They released them
into the wild. And that's why Australia now has
one of the largest populations of feral camels
in the world. Yes. They are the direct descendants
of those working animals. It's like a living
ghost of that entire industry. It is. And speaking
of ghosts and names, we have to talk about the
gone. The famous luxury train. Adelaide to Darwin.
I think most people assume it was named to honor
these men. That is what the modern marketing
brochures will tell you. A tribute to the pioneers.
But the source material tells a different story.
A much more ironic and frankly cynical story.
The train was originally nicknamed the Afghan
Express back in 1923. But it wasn't a compliment.
It was a joke. It was a joke. Possibly a slur.
It started because a railway man saw a Muslim
passenger get off the train to pray. The name
stuck as a way to mock how slow and primitive
the service was. So the most famous tribute to
them is actually a rebranded insult. Essentially,
yes. It was only in the 1960s that a marketing
executive decided to spin it as a tribute. It
was fiction, but it became accepted folklore
because it's a much nicer story for the tourists.
That just sums up the whole experience. Used,
abused, and then rewritten to fit a more palatable
narrative. It does. Are there other physical
traces left in the landscape besides the camels?
There are. Biological markers. Date palms. You
can often find these groves of date palms growing
near old water holes. They were planted by the
camelers as a food source. They're still there.
Researchers have found evidence of Sufism mystical
Islam out there. Prayer beads, texts, letters
left behind in old mosques. It shows this rich,
complex spiritual life that most of white Australia
was completely oblivious to. So let's step back.
We have this incredible arc, men imported as
tools, effectively. They build the country. They
create unique communities. And then, thanks to
policy and technology, they're erased. It's a
classic example of invisible history. You know
the famous poet Banjo Patterson waltzing Matilda?
Of course. The voice of the bush. The very one.
He spent time in places like Bork when the cameleers
were everywhere. But if you read his work, they
are almost entirely absent. He wrote them out
of the national mythology because they didn't
fit the image he wanted to project. That's the
ultimate frustration. By any definition, they
were the Australian Bushmen. They were surviving
out there better than anyone. We were making
it possible for the others to be there at all.
Well, this has certainly shifted my perspective.
The outback isn't just sheep and horses. It's
date palms, prayer mats, and camels. It's a much
richer, more complex tapestry than we're usually
told. Before we wrap up, here's a final thought
for you to carry with you. Next time you see
a documentary about the Australian outback and
you see a feral camel wandering through the scrub.
Right. Don't just think of it as a pest or an
invasive species. Think of it as a living monument,
a breathing statue for the thousands of men who
were forced to leave, but whose legacy literally
refused to die. A legacy that's still wandering
the desert today. Thanks for listening to this
deep dive. We'll catch you on the next one.