Venue:                       Castello's Cucina, Living Choice 

 

 

Guests:                      Harry McLean, Marjorie Andrews, John Smith, and Rob's assistants Eucabeth Mokaya and Caroline Palacios

 

Attendance:              29 members and 6 guests

Judy Barton launched the meeting with an invocation extolling the virtues of kindness and warmth as special Christmas gifts. President John noted that the Thrift Shop had revenue of $1400+ for last week, while the month of November had a record $8500 +. Well done. Bunnings BBQ on 27 November yielded $1037; Ken deserves praise for pulling it off when much of the regular team were doing renovations at Calperum.  

Paul Duke introduced Pamela who was born to a Catholic Polish family in Horsham, schooled at Cabra college in Adelaide and gained her BA at Flinders Uni. She has been a secondary school teacher of history, english and a range of other subjects for 40 years. 7 years into her teaching she decided to research the history of camels and cameleers in South Australia. 

In 1987 Pamela published In the Steps of the Camel Men, followed in 1995 by Linden Girl, and Beltana and Beyond in 2012. In 2008 she was awarded an OAM for her writings about the Afghan and Aboriginal cameleers and has, for a number of years, been a consultant to film makers undertaking documentaries on this history.

 

Pamela explained that Britain had a voracious appetite for establishing colonies in the late 18th century and early 1900s to feed raw materials into their industrial revolution. Sons of the British nouveau riche were encouraged to emigrate to develop the new lands. And so it was with entrepreneur Thomas Elder who came to South Australia in 1854 backed by the South Australia Company in England. Of a similar ilk was Robert Barr Smith who arrived in 1856 - they formed Elder Smith Company. At that stage most of the population lived close to the sea. The ambition of these two was to develop the inhospitable northern part of South Australia above the Goyder Line on huge pastoral leases and thereby develop a large sheep population to feed the Brits demand for wool.  All was going well until the drought of 1863-1865 when bullocks and horses could no longer operate in these harsh conditions. Thomas Elder decided that camels were the answer and he journeyed to the British colony in India which was able to attract camels and cameleers from Afghanistan. 121 camels were imported from Karachi to the port of Port Augusta, bound for Beltana Station. 

This marked the beginning of the development of northern SA and the red centre. 

 

Cameleers lived in tough conditions. They were contracted for only 3 years and denied access to women from back home......hence many married/lived with Aboriginal and European women. They walked the full journeys which could last 4 months. And it was very heavy work. The contribution of the Beltana camels and cameleers was enormous as evidenced by the building of the Overland Telegraph (from Adelaide to Darwin), servicing copper, gold and wolfram mine camps and carrying ore from the mines like Arltunga and Tennant Creek (16 weeks of travel) to Port Augusta, bringing supplies to the urban centres and aboriginal camps, meeting the needs of those on the Strzelecki, Birdsville and Oodnadatta tracks, carting fencing wire to other States to inhibit rabbit infestation, enabling survey teams to operate, repairing the many government bores in the outback, and much more.....and in the hottest of conditions. From 1872-1875 Elder pioneered a camel train trip to Perth.  By 1907 there were 305 Beltana camels in action. In 1920 fresh supplies were enabled from Oodnadatta to Hermansberg Aboriginal Mission. The empire of Sydney Kidman was built on camels and cameleers.

 

The cameleers were nation builders. While Afghans were denied citizenship (permanent dwellers but no government support), their children diversified into many different occupations. Time did not allow Pamela to talk about descendant Mohamed Alum who was a renowned Adelaide herbalist. 

 

Pamela was applauded for her great historical contribution.

 

Patsy Beckett has been asked by Ken to organise a roster for the Bunnings BBQs similar to that which she has managed with Mitre 10....please register with Ken.

 

Stephen Baker reported that Garry had been laid low with a heavy cold. He will be issuing invitations to members able to do some heavy lifting with the set-up for Sunday's carols....to be at the Rotunda by 2.30 - 3pm. Everyone else to be there by 5pm. We are all hoping for good weather. Please come in Rotary clobber and bring your own chairs. Lolly bagging is at the end of this meeting. Thank you to all those who provided Christmas toiletry gifts for the Salvos......excellent effort! 

 

Jerry Casburn urged all members who have yet to respond to the Hyde Park Tavern Christmas dinner invitation for next Tuesday to do so ASAP. Please include menu choices.

 

Paul Duke has scored 2 very heavy (500kgs each) functional anaesthetic machines from QEH plus monitoring equipment from WCH. with the intention of supplying a hospital in PNG. They are now stored at RARE (formerly DIK) and Paul is hoping to swing support from the International Committee to cover the cost of transport to PNG. Editor wonders what would be the cost of excess luggage.

 

Rob's assistant Eucabeth won the cash, Judy Barton the chocolates and Vera-Ann some healthy black jelly beans.

 

And the meeting again closed benignly, this time at 7.52 after an acceptably good story from the Prez.