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I am sauntering with a rolling, almost hypnotic gait. The sun blazes from a cloudless sky while the odd fly strafes my ears and nose. With feet dug firmly into stirrups and a firm thwack on the haunch, we break into a trot. A relief, then, not to stumble or fall for I am a clumsy rider, more attuned to bicycles or trams. More surprising, even surreal, is the milieu: I am clinging to a camel in the middle of deepest, reddest Australia.

If the idea of camel treks in Australia seems absurd or contrived, think again. In the early pioneering days before roads and trains, camels were widely used to supply remote outback settlements and stations. These hardy animals had the pace and stamina, and together with their handlers were brought from the Indian subcontinent. The cameleers became known – exotically but some-what inaccurately – as ‘Afghans’, and their once vital role was immortalised, albeit perversely, with the completion of a railway between Adelaide and Alice Springs in 1929. The Ghan, as it is still called, became Australia’s most famous (and for decades famously unreliable) train. It also signalled the cameleers’ eventual decline.

In Alice today there are faint hints of the camels’ heyday. An annual, rather jolly ‘camel cup’ race highlights their surprising speed. Streets named Mahomed and Bokhara recall the cameleers’ background and I was told there is still a small mosque used by a handful of descendants. But I had come 90km south on the main Adelaide-bound highway to a camel farm for a taste of the old ways. After a quick drill in mounting and steering, off we strolled with the day’s needs stored in canvas saddlebags. For the next five days, we were at the mercy of the elements, our camels’ temperaments and their owners’ cooking.

Neil and Jayne Waters have been working with camels for years. Their lifeblood is yard rides and jaunts around a nearby hill. Yet it is the longer trips, with full days in the saddle and sleeping out in the bush, that hold most allure and which reflect their affection – and respect – for these remarkable animals.

First things first; they don’t do luxury. It isn’t their style. One comes, not for pampering, but the simple joys of near-pristine bush, its exceptional light, crystalline night skies and the eerie relics of its original inhabitants. A tolerance of the appalling sounds and smells comprising a camel’s routine is, well, useful.

As the Stuart Highway fell behind, we padded on through spinifex and acacia scrub dotted with desert oaks. The eight of us each had our own camel and though not tied nose to tail, their natural inclination is to fall in line. Our routine was set effortlessly: a few hours’ riding, a pause for billy (or campfire) tea, more riding, lunch and riding again…..but not quite into sunset.

The camels were mostly impeccable, just occasionally sneaking a quick tug-and-munch at branches or patches of grass. I soon became accustomed to the elevated view, to barely having to watch one’s step. Small kangaroos and wallabies patrolled russet ridges like shy sentries while wedge-tail eagles hovered and dived in their hunt. Nearly twenty kilometres later, we emerged by a sandy clearing with a prefabricated hut. Set in the lee of low rocky hills, this rudimentary campsite was our base for the next four nights. Nearby stands Rainbow Valley, a striking outcrop of mottled sandstone that blazes in the evening sun but is best viewed from rain-soaked claypans. Settling down beside a crackling fire, talk turned to dangers here in the bush. Apart from heat, bushfires and dehydration, there are few: snakes are elusive and spend winter hibernating, scorpions would be rather bad luck and dingoes really only howl and prowl. Neil reserved his greatest caution for the muscular bull ant (“Careful where you sit or you’ll know if just one gets in your pants!”) and his scorn for feral cats.

I was curious about Australia’s dromedaries, which had not solely been the preserve of ‘Afghans’. Difficult terrain induced a camel-mounted police force that patrolled cattle towns, collected and paid for dingo scalps and even helped administer births, deaths and marriages. This pragmatic approach continued in some parts as late as the 1950s. Subsequently abandoned, the camels thrived and they remain a common sight by the central roads and highways. Moreover, they are mostly there for the taking. Occasional exports to the Middle East (for meat rather than breeding) hardly curb their rising numbers. So when he wants to acquire another, Neil simply goes out and catches one.

Frost dusted our thick swags, or bedding, rolls next morning. The camels were unhobbled, saddled and by eight-thirty we were off. A low winter sun cast long shadows so we seemed marooned atop grotesque, leggy creatures. For much of the time we traversed a private cattle station though you would hardly know it; a few cows here, dung pats there and occasional runs of fencing.

Whoosh, whoosh! we exclaimed, dismounting near some cliffs. Neil gathered us round to explain how this area had once been an Aboriginal camp. With runoff from the hills channelled into ravines and gullies, and then emerging onto the plain, it would have been the land of plenty if not exactly fertile. “And we know this,” he continued “from the stones…” They lay everywhere – not so much rounded and weathered but sharp, worked shards and even a few grinding stones, the surest signs of prior habitation.

While any sharp eyes might have spotted them, only knowledge coaxed us into a small ravine and a brief clamber up to a shallow cave. Its back wall and part of the ceiling were decorated with ochre designs, notably squiggles, spirals and stencilled hands. The inevitable question: how old? “Maybe forty, fifty years, when the last Arrente people lived round here…..maybe two thousand” replied Neil. It was almost impossible to tell for the old artists often revitalised ancient markings with fresh colour.

We were silent. These slender ghosts of a vanished culture were compelling and nothing bridges the millennia quite like a handprint. There was more – another ravine with overhangs and a dozen or so hands (one beside the outline of a bird’s foot), and a cluster of small tiered waterholes that echoed a map-like carving of linked spirals There are thousands of sites like this scattered across Australia, most unknown, forgotten or simply kept secret by traditional guardians.

We lunched in the mouth of a tunnel cave. Neil indicated a violet-flowered plant known as ‘native tobacco’ or pituri. Aboriginals made a mild stimulant from its leaves that induced a sense of well-being and, more importantly, kept them going on long, hard marches. “Don’t pick them and rub your eyes,” he said, “’cos they’ll sting like mad.” Over the days, we were to see plants such as bush tomato and native orange, shrubs that seemed named in a spirit of optimism rather than real similarity. Despite its celebrated Martian redness, the bush can be surprisingly green after good rains.

As if to dispel any doubts that the Centre does get them, we visited the Hugh River. In the vicinity stand beautiful strands of pale ghost gums and tinged red gums. We rode along the Hugh’s broad sandy bed, now bleached like an old bone, yet in flood even our camels’ heads would be under water. Debris wrapped around trees and left hanging high and dry confirmed a spectacular torrent. I would like to think that out here in the sublime stillness, our only signature was soft tracks in the sand.

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