Australia's Muslim Cameleers

Australia's Muslim Cameleers is back in stock (and on its way to Canberra to be gifted by the Prime Minister to some special visiting guests). Between 1870 and 1920 as many as 2000 cameleers and 20,000 camels arrived in Australia from Afghanistan and northern India; each has their own fascinating story.

Dost Mahomed

Dost Mahomed was the son of Mullah Mohamed Jullah of Gaznee. A Pashtun, he served as a ‘Sepoy’ in the British-Indian army before being recruited by George Landells. At 45 years he was the oldest cameleer in the Burke and Wills exploration party. Burke included Dost Mohamed in his advance from Menindee to the Cooper Creek but left him there with Brahe’s party while taking some camels on his desperate dash to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Dost helped supplement the waiting party’s diet with ducks and fish and accompanied Brahe’s party when it left for Menindee on the very morning of Burke’s longoverdue return to the Cooper depot. During Howitt’s Victorian Relief Expedition, which recovered the bodies of Burke and Wills, Dost Mohamed was bitten by a bull camel. It ‘lifted him off the ground and shook him with great ease, as a cat would shake a mouse’. He permanently lost the use of his right arm, and was later awarded 200 pounds by the Victorian Government. After the expedition he worked in William Ah Chung’s market garden in Menindee, where he died in the early 1880s. [William Strutt album, State Library of New South Wales]

Abdul Wahid

Abdul Wahid or Wade, a major camel entrepreneur. Originally from Quetta, he arrived in Australia in 1879. In 1895 he established the Bourke Carrying Company, importing his own camels and cameleers. He helped fund the construction of the Adelaide mosque. Abdul Wade was known for his adoption of western clothes, and later built a large house on Sydney Harbour. Photographed at the Mount Garnet mine, Queensland, 1890s. [13127, State Library of Queensland]

Juma Khan

Under the Commonwealth’s Immigration Restriction Act 1901, intending or returning immigrants faced a dictation test (set in any language), established as a means of keeping Australia’s population ‘white’. [Juma Khan, 53 years, Afghan (1924) was one of the many cameleers who] obtained exemptions from the dictation text, enabling them to visit their homelands and return to Australia.

Find out more about Australia's Muslim Cameleers here.