Camel Dreaming

Despite my mother’s wishes to the contrary – or perhaps because of them - I was unable to resist structuring our outback excursion around camel experiences. To begin with, I booked us a room at The Lost Camel Resort, so named for a poorly worded legend involving lost wages, lost dreams, lost lives, and of course, lost camels.

Serendipity contributed significantly to the camel theme. On our first morning drive to Ayer’s Rock/Uluru, we encountered a herd of feral camels crossing the road. Mom nearly wet herself with excitement.

The following day, on a hike through the Mulga Gorge at Kata Tjuta/The Olgas, I spied a pile of impossibly white objects lying at the bottom of a side gorge to the left of the trail. Bright white is generally not a colour consistent with the palette of the Australian Outback, thus the pile warranted closer examination. Slipping stealthily off the trail, I scrambled across the slick rock and nearly wet myself with excitement. The immense size of the bones made it immediately clear that a camel had met with an end tragic for the camel but beneficial for the bottom of the food chain. The bones were shockingly clean for their weight…or shockingly heavy for their size. Not shockingly, I knew that I HAD to have at least one of those bones…Unfortunately, the skull was no where in sight.

I would like to state for the record that I in no way endorse the removal of any artefacts, flora, or fauna from national parks, including rocks and shells. I have considerable respect for Aboriginal Lands and Culture and would never willingly or knowingly desecrate any site considered sacred. But then, camels are NOT native to this area, so perhaps the presence of their bones is a desecration and their removal might be a public service.

My conscience was reeling, but I stashed a massive camel vertebra beneath a foot bridge and employed the remainder of the hike to consider the delicate morality of this situation. Preoccupied by my ruminations, we came upon a ranger filling a plastic bag with non-native invasive weeds. Normally, I favour the adaptive advantage of invasive weeds and support their right to colonize new lands. Today I conveniently opted to employ a change of perspective in order to get what I wanted. I happily collected my new found treasure and whisked it out of the park.

In keeping with the theme, I booked a sunset camel ride. It was no small motivator that the tour concluded with beer and camel meat appetizers, which tasted suspiciously like Hickory Farms Summer Sausage, but then maybe I have unknowingly been eating camel meat at Christmas all these years. Camels are frighteningly smelly beasts with notoriously unpleasant dispositions. Our mount, Sullay, proved especially so and was fitted with a mesh bag to keep him from nipping the camel in front of him. There was nothing to keep him from urinating all over himself and the camel behind him.

Speaking with the guides after the tour, I confessed my sin of stealing camel bones. “Oh, was that at the base of Kata Tjuta? Yeah, my boss took the skull.”

Envious absolution was mine.