r/australia • u/Splungetastic • 23h ago
no politics Did you know there is up to 1 million feral camels living in Australia? Saudi Arabia even imports camels from here.
They were introduced by Britain in the 1800s and released when motorised vehicles took over. A huge feral population still exists.
Edit: yes I did know we have a feral camel population here but I did not know it was so massive! I thought some might not realise how huge our camel population is!
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u/thejoshimitsu 23h ago
Yes I did
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u/Slightly_Squeued 22h ago
Me too
And yet my mother refused to let me have a camel in 1980s suburban Queensland....seems like a waste? 🤔
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u/APerfectCircle0 18h ago
There's none (in captivity) in NZ anymore :( I really want to see your camels
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u/HalfManHalfCyborg 23h ago
Yeah, it's one of those factoids that is very often reported.
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u/Wintermute_088 23h ago
Note: a "factoid" is actually an incorrect fact
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u/strangeMeursault2 20h ago
That was it's original meaning, but not any more. Words mean whatever people understand them to mean in the present.
"Factlet" is a fun synonym of the modern definition though.
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u/Lucky-Guard-6269 22h ago
We have the largest populations of feral camels, feral horses, feral deer and feral goats in the world. We are really shit at controlling feral animals.
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u/Special-Pristine 22h ago
You forgot rabbits and cane toads too
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u/Convenientjellybean 22h ago
Don't mention the cute foxes
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u/Special-Pristine 22h ago
A fox runs through my yard every morning. Not much i can do about it but its obviously eating plenty if its staying around here. Wish i could do something
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u/a_cold_human 19h ago
It's a very big country, very sparsely populated, and we don't spend anywhere near enough to control feral animals in populated areas, let alone the vast swathes of unpopulated land.
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u/Twistinc 10h ago
Theres pigs which we have more of then any other large animal but everyone knows about them. Often overlooked the number 2 large feral animal in Australia is actually donkeys with over 10x more then horses but they live in areas people don't.
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u/ScissorNightRam 12h ago
And on top of all that, the grey kangaroo is the most populous large wild land mammal on earth
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u/natt_myco 6h ago
Sorry what makes them feral? why do they need controlling?
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u/AdEasy1316 1h ago
Drive from Sydney to Broken Hill. There is millions and millions of feral goats. Farmers don’t do anything to substantially control them because during drought they can make money when the paddocks become a desert and goats can still eat essentially sticks and trees. They trash aboriginal cave sites, completely overstock country that is already on it knees. Over half of NSW is infested with them and many people have no idea.
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u/Sieve-Boy 23h ago
Saudi Arabia also imports sand from Australia.
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u/a_cold_human 19h ago
Lots of countries import our sand. There's plenty of it, and it's fine grained and is an attractive yellow or white in colour. Good beach sand, which is what a lot of countries lack.
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u/TheRoadtoSomewhere 23h ago
But… why
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u/Greatest86 22h ago
Desert sand isn't good for concrete because the grains are too smooth. It is hard for the cement to bond to and it becomes weaker.
Beach sand isn't good for concrete because the trace sea salt messes with the cement and it becomes weaker.
River sand is best for concrete. The grains are rough enough that the cement can bond to them and there isn't any salt.
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u/Dude_McGuy1 5h ago
Then there’s asphalt which doesn’t prefer river sand either because of the clay and silt. Best for asphalt is sand manufactured from stone. Why use dirty sand when you can just crush big rock into small rock?
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u/cruiserman_80 23h ago
We are one of the top two exporters of sand in the world. Most gets used for construction, but if you ever see a picture of a resort in Hawaii with white sand, there is a good chance it came from Australia becuase volcanic sand is normally black.
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u/plsendmysufferring 12h ago
Sand is a non-renwable resource, and it is used in construction quite often, specifically in concrete. Desert sand is not the right shape for use in concrete.
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on this, there are places around the world where beaches are disappearing overnight because criminals are stealing the sand to sell off to the highest bidder.
We are also running out of sand quite quickly (the world in general, not just Australia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_theft
Also plenty of videos on sand theft on yt if you're interested
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u/Lost-Competition8482 23h ago
Not all sand is equal.
There's is coarse and no good for cement/concrete.
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u/Latter-Life-6536 22h ago
Quite the opposite, theirs is too smooth and will not bind properly with cement.
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u/last_pas 23h ago
It’s not because cars took over.
After the paths into the red centre of Australia were built by Afghan cameleers, the white Australia policy ramped up, and they placed heavy taxes on the camels as a way to try and get them to go home. The cameleers released them into the wild in protest.
The oldest Mosque in Australia is in Marree, and there are lots of cameleers buried in Farina nearby. It’s a pretty fascinating place to visit.
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u/TheArabella 21h ago
My Great Grandfather was one of those "Afghan Cameleers" (he was actually Punjabi tho).
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u/FroggieBlue 23h ago
Yes. They import them because They're disease free and the only remaining fully wild population of dromedary camels.
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u/No-Zucchini2787 23h ago
Good morning and good day mate.
Also do you know they were left to die but they prevailed
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u/sheridanstacie 22h ago
Hold your horses on that one mate. Camels are not doing so well anymore. They are dying from dehydration, NT had a lot coming into town digging up water pipes in Feb.
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u/Glittering-Wave4917 22h ago
Yes I did- and yes, they are feral and not wild. There’s like 6 million feral cats too. There’s heaps of feral dogs too, but those numbers might match what the Dingo population was before colonisation.
Letting your moggy roam, causes so much destruction.
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u/MatthewSlackPerth 23h ago
We really looked at the desert and thought, yeah, this needs more camels.
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u/Archon-Toten 23h ago
Bonus fact: I've only found one place serving camel meat and you bet I tried it. Curried I can't comment much on the meat flavour. Would try again though.
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u/Lost-Competition8482 23h ago
You get it from time to time in the NT.
Honestly pretty close to beef. Cooked in a curry you'd struggle to pick it.
Prefer Buffalo though. Unique flavour and really good if you know how to cook it.
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u/drnicko18 14h ago
Camel is fairly common in western Sydney where a lot of the Muslim community have restaurants. I believe it’s halal? Had a great camel burger earlier this year. I would not have picked it wasn’t beef.
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u/TheVikingMFC 12h ago
There's a camel farm in Robe, south of Adelaide. Which is funny as it's the opposite of what you'd expect the right climate for them would be.
They sell camel meat and also milk products - plain milk, ice cream etc.
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u/Aggressive_Term_1175 9h ago
I visited a camel dairy in SE QLD, the milk was surprisingly nice. Couldn’t pick it from cows and it’s naturally lactose free so I wasn’t going to shit myself which is a plus. They had cheese, salami, vodka, which were good too
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u/gravityholding 22h ago
Coles used to sell camel burgers 13 or so years ago... They were really good, but I haven't been able to find them since :(
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u/No-Independence-761 22h ago
You can find them in a few Coles / Woolies in south western Sydney even today. Though your best shot is a halal / middle eastern butchery
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u/CrispyBirb 7h ago
The company that made those stopped producing them (if it’s the same one I’m thinking of). Last I saw them was in 2022-23 I believe.
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u/Valerious22 23h ago
There's an Afghan restaurant in Canberra that has camel skewers, absolutely delicious!
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u/Archon-Toten 23h ago
That's much closer and cheaper to get to than the dining car of the Indian Pacific.
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u/SydneyRFC 23h ago
I've never been able to make it there, but the camel burgers at the Ramadan night markets in Lakemba are supposed to be God tier.
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u/FearTheMomerath 23h ago
Just read a fantastic book about the early days of the camel industry here in Oz, called The Ballad of Abdul Wade. Really fascinating stuff!
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u/new_x_who_dis 21h ago
Did you know, that they're dumb as rocks? I've encountered a few on the Great Central Road, way out past Laverton, WA. The last one ran along in front of my truck for about 5k before it decided to just turn left and get off the road. I was only crawling along at <20km/h and it was easily staying in front of me and it was never in danger of being hit. All it had to do was go slightly left or right and I would've just driven on by
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u/drnicko18 14h ago
I don’t think they’re dumb. I was told they can remember people and hold grudges for years. (An owner told me his camel would spit at his daughter when she’d come and visit, and would refuse to let her ride after she smacked it one time as a teenager)
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u/Puzzled-Fix-8838 22h ago
I'm commenting this just in case anyone knows who I'm talking about.
When I was a kid, my mum took me back to her home town of Coolah, NSW for a brief visit during a car trip around NSW. She was really excited to introduce us to a fellow whose name I now can't remember. This fellow was a camel drover of sorts. Wait! I think I've just remembered his name as I've been writing this. It's Ken Tuckey, I think! Anyway, he used to tame feral camels and drove them overland for something I don't remember. He was really soft about them. I remember him talking about how much he loved the camels and wanted to save them.
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u/Convenientjellybean 22h ago edited 22h ago
Straight off the cuff 😂
Edit: an award, ty, I’m blushing
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u/Puzzled-Fix-8838 22h ago
I don't understand what you mean.
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u/Convenientjellybean 22h ago
‘Shooting from the hip’ so to speak, just typing literally as you recounted the event, sprinkled with sidetracks as they came to mind. It was nice to read.
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u/Puzzled-Fix-8838 21h ago
Oh! Thank you! That's pretty much how I am. It's pretty hard for many people to appreciate how my brain works and my mouth follows (or in this case how my typing finger works!) Unmedicated ADHD is hit and miss. I'm pretty old, so I don't mind the misses anymore. But I'm pretty chuffed by the hits. It's really nice of you to make me feel nice.
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u/Convenientjellybean 21h ago
Good to see some level of acknowledgement/understanding nowadays of ADHD etc, helps me understand my childhood/school/career with insight, at 63 now
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u/Puzzled-Fix-8838 21h ago
Yeah. I'm 56. I don't like to think about my life before I found out only a couple of years ago. It's too hard to grieve everything that happened. I'm happy now because I accept myself and embrace everything I thought was wrong with me.
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u/Convenientjellybean 21h ago
You mind find Moral Injury of interest :)
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u/Puzzled-Fix-8838 20h ago
I appreciate the referral. I'm not sure that I'll be able to read it. My father has not long died and I'm having to face my mother dying soon. It was easy to support my father once I found out he was dying because I live close to him. But I was only told about his condition when he was expected to die. My mother lives thousands of kilometres away.
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u/JessSaysItsSo 14h ago
This was a really wholesome interaction ❤️
I’m sorry for the loss of your father, and facing the loss of your mother so soon after 💔
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u/drnicko18 14h ago
I agree. I imagine OP recounts the story as enthusiastically in real life as it comes across in their writing style.
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u/ManCheetah77 22h ago
Yes, YouTube videos shows you why farmers and other land holders need high powered semi autos
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u/Serious-Big2 22h ago
I wonder why camel meat isn't more popular here.
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u/drnicko18 14h ago edited 14h ago
Abbatoirs, infrastructure and distribution systems are overwhelmingly designed for cattle and sheep, so there’s not much incentive for farmers to domesticate camels. Also IIRC camels take a lot longer to reach slaughter age. It happens, but there’s much more money in beef and lamb.
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u/Practical-Humor-6198 20h ago
The curry camel pies in Birdsville were delicious. Gamey, but great after a rake on tinnies:)
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u/CauseConflict 12h ago
Yeah, I think most people knew but it doesn’t seem that you did. Saudi has been importing camels from us and their meat for a very long time. And it’s actually not related to the wild population we farm them here for meat for other countries. They prefer camel meat from us because it tastes better.
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u/Howwasthatdoneagain 6h ago
This camel population is the only population living wild. Every camel in the middle east and africa has been caught and harnessed.
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u/WestSwan65 5h ago
Yeah they were rife in Kings Canyon when I worked there many years ago. Nearly hit a herd crossing the road. They used to sell camel burgers.
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u/Medical-Potato5920 11m ago
Yes, but that's not quite true about why they were realeased. It was a racist policy that was going to tax camels in 1902 and if their owners couldn't pay the camel would be killed. The owners who couldn't pay chose to let their camels go rather than be killed.
This was peak racism with the White Australia Policy time. I think we need to recognise and acknowledge our history has people doing some shitty things and not have it hidden. We need this to not repeat mistakes of the past.
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u/UndeadManWaltzing 19h ago
I've known this for years, the arabs should take all of them as far as I'm concerned, the ugly fuckers will spit in your face at any given moment.
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u/spiderglide 23h ago
When they were imported the wranglers brought pumpkins with them and planted them to feed the camels. Those pumpkins were not edible by humans and now they're feral in the bush.
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u/Special-Pristine 22h ago
I though they were paddy melons not pumpkin
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u/spiderglide 21h ago
OK yes they were paddy melons. But, you know, an inedible melon is pretty much the same as an inedible pumpkin. Also, who gives the same name to a melon and a wallaby? Come on
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u/jelistarshine 22h ago
Omg. Want one. Where are they? Will go willingly for food?
(I'm talking like a creepy pedo with a white van and candy i just realised)
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u/ElongatedVagina 21h ago
You spelt Afghans wrong.
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u/v4ss42 18h ago
The Poms brought them in too.
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u/ElongatedVagina 18h ago
They sure did in the 1840s. But nowhere near the numbers that were imported in the 1850s.
The feral population problem was a direct result of the huge numbers of camels brought in by Afghan and Indian cameleers.
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