It's a little known nugget of history that eight Afghans arrived in Melbourne in June 1860 with a shipment of 24 camels to assist the great Burke and Wills expedition to cross the continent of Australia. The Afghan (or "Ghan") community swiftly grew to 3,000. Until the 1930s camels were the prime means of bulk transport in the outback. Inevitably, the camels wandered loose, turned feral, and now number over a million. They bred like, well, rabbits, which are another famous pest in Australia. Every nine years their numbers double. A camel culling programme began last year to prevent further damage to the fragile outback ecosystems.
This is all background to some shocking news. Australia may well become the world's largest exporter of camel meat. An Egyptian businessman, Magdy El Ashram, plans to build the largest slaughterhouse in Australia, capable of processing 100,000 animals a year, in Port Pirie in the south of the country. The meat would be marketed throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
The shame of it is that the Mena region is the home of the camel where people have long loved camel races and camel beauty contests and camel meat. It's as if Saudi Arabia were exporting kangaroo meat to Australia. It's just not right somehow.
