Pioneering Cameleers of MarreePrint Page

The cairn commemorates the pioneering cameleers of Marree.

Camels opened the great central expanses of Australia. For more than 50 years until the 1920s, camel trains radiated into the outback from railways that gradually extended into the interior, or from points near otherwise Isolated, inaccessible parts of the country. In long strings of up to 70, they sustained human life and new endeavours in the emerging outback communities. They carried building and railway materials, food, furniture, water, mail and medicine to the pastoralists and mining ventures, returning with the products of those inland enterprises – baled wool and oil. Camel cartage bases were formed at railheads or near ports, and ‘Afghan-towns’ developed on their outskirts. These became known as Ghantowns.

The cameleers were Muslims who adhered faithfully to their religion and built mosques wherever they settled. They brought with them no women, and although some married European or Aboriginal women, their families always lived in the Ghantowns and rarely mixed in Australian society. Camels were singularly superior to horses and bullocks in the dry centre, and the Afghan cameleers were better suited physically than the Europeans to the harsh conditions in inland Australia.

Faiz Mahomet was chief cameleer, or jemadar, at the first Afghan settlement in Australia at Beltana. Born in Khandahar, he had come out with his younger brother, Tagh, in Elder’s’ first shipment. The brothers later became camel importers and merchants themselves, borrowing money from Elder to start their carrying business. In 1883 they established a base at the new railhead at Marree (then called Hergott Springs), which soon became the hub of camel cartage, servicing virtually the whole of central Australia.

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