Why Are There Wild Camels in Australia? Feral Camel Facts

How camels came to Australia

Australia has no native camels. The first camel to arrive, a dromedary later named Harry, landed at Port Adelaide in 1840 after a voyage from the Canary Islands on which the other camels died. Harry went on an expedition in 1846 and became famous for an accident in which his movement made his owner’s gun go off.

The real start came in 1860, when camels were imported for the Burke and Wills expedition, the attempt to cross the continent from south to north. Over the following decades many thousands more followed. Estimates suggest that at least 10,000 to 15,000 camels were brought in between about 1860 and 1907, mostly dromedaries from British India, with others from Afghanistan and the Middle East.

The “Afghan” cameleers

The camels came with experienced handlers. Australians called them “Afghans” or “Ghans”, although many were from what is now Pakistan and India as well as Afghanistan, and most were Muslims. They built mosques in outback towns, ran camel trains and set up camel businesses of their own.

From the 1860s to the 1920s camel strings were the trucks of the outback. They carried wool bales, food, mail and building materials to remote stations and mining towns, supplied the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line, and carried pipe for the water pipeline to the Western Australian goldfields. The famous Ghan passenger train, which runs between Adelaide and Darwin, is named in honor of the cameleers.

Why the camels were released

In the 1920s and 1930s, roads, railways and motor trucks made camel trains uneconomic. At the same time, immigration restrictions under the White Australia policy made it harder for cameleers to stay or bring in new handlers. Many working camels were no longer needed.

Some were sold, but many were simply turned loose in the desert. The dromedary camel was perfectly suited to central Australia: hot, dry country with few large predators, plenty of shrubs and salty plants to eat, and no camel diseases. The released animals survived, bred and spread.

How many camels live in Australia today?

Counting camels across the remote deserts is difficult, and estimates vary a lot:

At that growth rate a camel population can double in less than a decade, so numbers have risen again since 2013. Most feral camels live in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and northwest South Australia, with smaller numbers in western Queensland. Their home ranges are huge: short-term ranges of 50–150 km² (19–58 sq mi), and yearly movements over thousands of square kilometers.

Their ability to go long periods without drinking, explained in How long can a camel go without water?, lets them use desert country far from permanent water.

Why feral camels are a problem

Camels eat a very wide range of plants, more than 80% of the species available in some areas, and can damage vegetation badly when their numbers are high, especially in drought. Problems include:

• Water sources. A herd can drink a small waterhole dry and foul it with dung, which harms native wildlife and plants that depend on it. Rock holes and soaks of cultural importance to Aboriginal people are among the places affected.
• Plants. Camels strip favored trees and shrubs, including some traditional bush foods.
• Infrastructure. In droughts, thirsty camels break fences, water tanks, pipes, taps and air-conditioning units in remote communities and on cattle stations.
• Competition. They compete with native grazing animals such as the red kangaroo and with cattle for food and water.

Feral camels are managed in Australia as an invasive species. Aboriginal land councils, state governments and pastoralists work together on management plans, and the program of 2009–2013 was the largest effort so far.

Are Australian camels useful too?

Australia’s camels are also seen as a resource. Because the population is free of many diseases found in camels elsewhere, live camels have been exported, mainly to the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Camel meat is sold in Australia and abroad, and a few camel dairies produce milk and cheese.

Tourism uses camels as well, with camel treks in the outback and sunset rides on beaches such as Cable Beach in Broome. Some scientists have also argued that large browsing animals such as camels partly fill a role left empty by Australia’s extinct giant marsupials, although most land managers see their overall impact as harmful where numbers are high.