
A ten-day camel trek through the Australian outback - hownottowrite
https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2017/august/1501509600/robert-skinner/lessons-camels
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cyberferret
A hilarious, and well written story.

I fondly remember my camel riding experiences along Cable Beach in Broome many
years ago. So much more peaceful and sedate than a horse ride.

A good addendum to this story (if I can find it) will be one that I've heard
here a couple of times, of a young lad who decided to walk across the
Kimberley desert with a camel pack, and it turns out one of the camels was
pregnant and gave birth during the trek, and he ended up carrying the baby
camel on his back a lot of the way. A similar story of courage, strength and
hilarity...

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Animats
Watch "From Alice to Ocean", which covers the same ground, with camels,
better.

One of the first CD-ROM multimedia presentations to be any good.

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fit2rule
There is a lot in this story to consider - if you love Australia, the land,
then this sort of story is bitter-sweet. It's about as white and imperialistic
an "Australia desert story" as you can get, and induces much cringe.
(Potatoes? Really?)

For those of you fascinated by this story you should know that camels are not
native to Australia, and have been considered a destructive, intrusive
species. Sure, they work great in the Australian desert - but they've had a
negative impact on that environment, in that they destroy the crops grown by
First Nation Australians as part of their tens-of-thousands-year-old land
caretaking traditions.

So .. Camels are one way to do it. Walking by yourself, another:

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-03/clinton-pryor-in-
canbe...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-03/clinton-pryor-in-canberra-
after-year-long-walk-for-justice/8867968)

~~~
pamqzl
> First Nation Australians

Please don't do that. Describing tribes as "nations" is a silly neologism when
they did it in North America, and it's even sillier when applied to the even
more primitive social structures that existed in pre-colonisation Australia.

~~~
fit2rule
Sorry, but no. The only thing primitive about the first nation of peoples that
inhabited the land which later came to be known as "Australia", is that they
were massacred and brought into non-existence by the invasion of white
Europeans who, still yet today it seems, even still seem to think that their
way of life is superior, and therefore anything otherwise is utterly inferior.
However, this is a matter of great debate.

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telesilla
Another interesting Australia/camel story is that of Robyn Davidson, whose
solo camel-crossing was made as the 2013 film Tracks.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robyn_Davidson#Tracks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robyn_Davidson#Tracks)

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2167266/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2167266/)

