It’s a bold move to pick a bone with one of Australia’s best-known and most celebrated writers, but Ryan Butta doesn’t shy away from it.
The writing of Henry Lawson, he says, “gave a sense of national identity … which still permeates how white Australians thinks about [themselves]”.
However, there are some glaring omissions in that writing, argues Butta, a NSW-based author and editor.
In 1892, when Lawson was reporting on his time in Bourke, in north-western New South Wales, he “not only ignored the Indigenous people, but [also] the Afghans”, Butta says.
Butta spent several years researching this history for his book, The Battle of Abdul Wade.
Wade was a young Afghan entrepreneur who first brought his camel trains to the outback in the 1890s.
He was revered by many in and around Bourke for his business nous and his generosity.
Among other things, Wade offered hundreds of his camels to Australia’s war effort at the outbreak of World War I.
However, he was attacked by other sections of the community, who saw him as a threat to their business interests, and to white Australia.
Wade was not alone in dividing opinions. Newspapers from the time heave with conflicted community sentiment about early camels.
For example, after flooding in 1890, the Cunnamulla Argus reported that: “When provisions had nearly run out and not even the lightest vehicle could stir on any highways leading to us, the despised Afghan came with his camels through wastes of water and saved us from semi-starvation.”
An 1892 editorial in the Bulletin put forward another view, saying “the imported Asiatic … is another cheap labor curse in a land where such curses are already much too plentiful”.
Butta believes it would have been impossible at that time to have missed the Afghans’ “ubiquity” in social, political and business life.
Yet, he says, Lawson wrote about none of it.
“If you know Bourke, you know Australia,” Lawson told a friend in a 1902 letter.
But which version of Australia?
How camels came to Australia
There’s some confusion about exactly when the first camels and their handlers arrived in Australia, and for what purpose.
We do know that “Harry” was the first camel to arrive in Australia after landing in Port Adelaide on 12 October, 1840. The animal was shipped from Tenerife, Spain, by the Phillips brothers, Henry Weston and George.
Camels were considered useful for exploring deserts and transporting wool and, in the following months, others landed in Tasmania and in Sydney.
Butta says camels were cheaper to run than horses and didn’t require as much water. They could also travel better in drought and floods.
According to Dave Phoenix, a historian at James Cook University, 25 camels arrived in Melbourne in 1860, imported from India by George Landells.
The Argus newspaper reported the camels arrived “under the care of two Arabs”, and Dr Phoenix says these would have been the first Arab camel-handlers in Australia. No further information about them is recorded.
In 1860, Burke and Wills used camels, primarily to cart water, on their expedition across Australia.
Few camels had been imported into Australia before then, so their use on the expedition was experimental and unique, and proved the animal’s worth in Australia’s arid conditions.
It wasn’t long before camels were being bred and used to cart goods in locations all around Australia.
Cameleer stories ‘in every rock, bush and hill’
During the mid-to-late 1800s and the early 1900s, camels played important roles in the wool industry, the mining industry, in the transportation of water and in the construction of the Overland Telegraph and the rabbit-proof fence, Butta notes.
“In all these iconic Australian ideas or events, you’ll find that camels were involved in that period,” he wrote.
He argues that’s something that hasn’t always been acknowledged.
“[When] we hear about the Overland Telegraph—do we know that it was actually camels that were instrumental in building that—which connected us to communication with London?”
He makes another important point.
“When we do hear about camels … we don’t hear about the men who are actually responsible for managing them and working with them,” he says.
Fahim Hashimy — an Afghan-Australian filmmaker, whose 2020 documentary told the history of Afghan cameleers in Australia — points to their other early contributions, such as the building of Australia’s first mosque in Marree, South Australia, in 1888.
The camels also contributed to the war effort.
“Afghan cameleers played a big role there,” Hashimy says. “Cameleers themselves were not allowed to join the army [but]because of the love… these people had towards Australia, they offered their camels to Australian army… just to contribute to Australian society.”
Scratch the surface and the stories of Afghan cameleers are almost everywhere in Australia, he says, “in every rock, bush and hill along the transport routes of outback Australia”.
‘People are really not aware’
Hashimy says people in Afghanistan aren’t aware of the impact their country people had in Australia.
However, he says, neither are Australians.
“If Afghan cameleers were not here then, Australia wouldn’t be opened up as it is right now,” he says, of the contribution they made to exploring the continent.
“Unfortunately, I found that, in Australia also, people are really not aware of [this history]. Especially if you go to the schools, universities, colleges … they have no idea of the Afghan cameleers’ contribution.”
The fact that the Afghans donated camels to the war effort, he says, is “never discussed on, for example, Anzac Day”.
Not acknowledging stories such as these from Australia’s history is a huge shame, Butta says.
“Imagine if people [from Afghanistan living in Australia] understood the contribution that Afghans have made here,” he says.
“Just imagine if [someone] came here out of Kabul for safety or [as a refugee] and someone said, ‘Hey, your compatriots made a huge contribution to this country’.”
He believes it’s equally important for other Australians to recognize.
“As a nation, we have so many unresolved parts of our history and I think it’s because we just don’t know about them,” Butta says.
“If you don’t know your history, you’re susceptible to [believing] things which aren’t true.”
Hashimy believes there are thousands of stories of Afghan cameleers in Australia, many of them positive, that could — and should — be told.
“How they were dealing with the bush, how they could find water, for example, in the middle of Australia coming from Afghanistan — it’s just unbelievable how they did their job.
“These people were incredible and we need to tell more detail about their story [with] as much honesty as we can,” he says.
“Their many contributions and stories must not be lost to time.”
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