Soren wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 12:10am:


Annie, this one's delusional rantings remind me of that other patient. What was his name? Corporate something, wasn't it?

The only thing corporate about that one was his medical cover. Remind me to ask which ward he ended up on after the surgery.

A man(questionable) with small genitals, bold hair and a 700ft carrot up his ass.
Also uneducated, ignorant and unable to answer questions, accept reality and incorporate facts and evidence which would make dialogue fairly hard


A bit of self analysis I see.

angeleyes wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 3:58pm:


Excuse me, are you trained in this area?

No? I'll thank you to keep quiet and wait for the doctor.

Look, kids! I've found some representations of Muslims in popular culture!









There are others, apparently.

Karnal wrote on May 27^th, 2012 at 8:05pm:

Alcohol is a no no

Charlie (real name Dur Muhammad Dadleh) had been a cameleer himself, working the Birdsville Track until trucks took over. Now in his in 70s, his memory was sharp with recollections of the camel days. Not for the first time, I wondered at the fortitude of Charlie and his people. Here at Farina they baked in their tin shanties in the scorching summers and were exposed to howling winds and piercing cold in winter - comfortable compared with the conditions under which they worked their cartage contracts in some of the harshest terrain in the world.

Charlie echoed my meandering thoughts: "They were real hard workers, long hours. Never took holidays in them days," he said. Pausing, his soft, lisping voice continued: "I was out working with camels when I was 14." And a longer pause. "I perished three times along the Birdsville Track." My surprise turned to amusement as I realised he was using the old bush meaning of the word 'perish' - to become faint, dizzy, dehydrated.

Charlie had been my mentor and guide during several trips to the Marree area on my search for information about these elusive Afghan cameleers. Son of Dadleh Balooch and an Irish mother who had married at Marree, Charlie lived in Ghantown there. He had taken me to locations long forgotten by the world - old Ghantowns, lonely graveyards, crumbling old mosques. He could tell me who was buried in the unmarked graves, recall who had occupied which Ghantown hut, and vividly recount stories of the characters and incidents of childhood in Marree. [/b]

Ghantowns - apart of Australia's foundation years

Camels opened the great central expanses of Australia. For more than 50 years until the 1920s, camel trains radiated into the outback from railways that gradually extended into the interior, or from points near otherwise Isolated, inaccessible parts of the country. In long strings of up to 70, they sustained human life and new endeavours in the emerging outback communities. They carried building and railway materials, food, furniture, water, mail and medicine to the pastoralists and mining ventures, returning with the products of those inland enterprises - baled wool and oil. Camel cartage bases were formed at railheads or near ports, and 'Afghan-towns' developed on their outskirts. These became known as Ghantowns.

The cameleers were Muslims who adhered faithfully to their religion and built mosques wherever they settled. They brought with them no women, and although some married European or Aboriginal women, their families always lived in the Ghantowns and rarely mixed in Australian society. Camels were singularly superior to horses and bullocks in the dry centre, and the Afghan cameleers were better suited physically than the Europeans to the harsh conditions in inland Australia.

My six-year odyssey began in May 1982 at the Port Augusta wharves - where the first commercial shipment of camels and their handlers disembarked from the steamer Blackwell on New Year's Day 1866. The shipment was made by pastoralist-entrepreneur Thomas Elder, who was determined to establish a carrying business and camel stud at his Beltana property in the nearby Flinders Ranges.

A great crowd had gathered on the wharves to watch the unloading of such strange cargo with their exotic, turbaned handlers. They weren't, however, the first camels in Australia. Among the first were those imported in 1860 for the Burke and Wills Expedition that was the first to cross the continent from south to north. Their use on that expedition led to the later imports.

Elder's original, elegant homestead at Beltana stood on a hill at the end of a winding road, behind date palms planted 100 years earlier by his Afghans. Station manager Peter Moroney was a little surprised by my interest in Afghans, and pointed down the hill. "They lived down there, somewhere near the troughs, but there's only a bit of rubble left. Their cemetery was somewhere between the hills," he said. "I've never been able to find it."

Outside the homestead I passed a memorial cairn erected to the explorer Ernest Giles, who set out from Beltana station in 1875 with Beltana camels and two of Elder's cameleers - Coogee Mahomet and Saleh - to successfully cross the Great Victoria Desert to the coast of Western Australia.

Beltana became a recruiting base for the invaluable camels and their handlers for major desert exploration expeditions - including Colonel Warburton's horrific crossing of the Great Sandy Desert in 1873 and William Gosse's into central Australia the same year, when Gosse and his Afghan offsider, Kamran, were the first Europeans to see and climb Uluru.

At the bottom of the hill below Beltana homestead I was surprised to see beautifully preserved stone and slate camel troughs, and the remains of a 'camel whip'. This latter piece of Afghan ingenuity allowed water to be drawn from a deep well using two wheels, rope and bucket and two camels - one attached to each wheel. Today, a windmill pumps water to the surface at Beltana, and the water quenches the thirst of its sheep, not camels. Nearby were the crumbling stone walls of the cameleers' living quarters, where broken china and glass, forks and a few metal fragments were all that remained of their material possessions.

Among the windswept hills I found four or five graves haphazardly huddled together. They were a dilapidated but recognisable representation of the folk graves of north-eastern Afghanistan. Some had pieces of local slate as head and foot markers; others had the wooden jenaza bier grave-surrounds (a representation of the deceased's last bed) of the Afghan's native land.

Faiz Mahomet was chief cameleer, or jemadar, at this first Afghan settlement in Australia. Born in Khandahar, he had come out with his younger brother, Tagh, in Elder's' first shipment. The brothers later became camel importers and merchants themselves, borrowing money from Elder to start their carrying business. In 1883 they established a base at the new railhead at Marree (then called Hergott Springs), which soon became the hub of camel cartage, servicing virtually the whole of central Australia.

http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/afghan-cameleers-australias-outback-history.htm

Although the number of Afghans coming to Australia was small (no more than 3000) compared with other ethnic groups, their contribution to this country has been much greater than most people realise. Afghans have made a substantial contribution to South Australia and Australia but history has almost ignored them, and the role they played opening up inland Australia.

Without the Afghans much of the development of the outback would have been very difficult if not impossible. Whole communities, towns, mining establishments, pastoral properties and some well known explorations in the interior have been made successful because of their contributions.

With their camels, who received more publicity than their owners, these cameleers opened up the outback, helped with the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line and Railways, erected fences, acted as guides for several major expeditions, and supplied almost every inland mine or station with its goods and services. These 'pilots of the desert' made a vital contribution to Australia.

The first Afghans arrived in South Australia in 1838 when Joseph Bruce brought out eighteen of them, one of whom died on 1 February 1840. When Bruce himself died, the men were handed over to John Gleeson, who also had imported some of them. The first camel arrived at Port Adelaide in 1840 but was shot in 1846 after it caused the death of explorer John Horrocks. As early as 1858 it was suggested that camels should be imported into the colony and that a depot should be established for their 'propagation and acclimation'. It led to the formation of the Camel Troop Carrying Company Ltd which unsuccessfully petitioned the government for financial aid in October 1858.



In 1862 Samuel Stuckey went to Karachi to bring out camels. He was unsuccessful that time, as was McKay from Mount Deception in 1864-5. However in 1866 Stuckey succeeded in bringing out more than a hundred camels and, as nobody knew how to handle camels, 31 Afghan cameleers as well.

Although these, and later camel men, came from different ethnic groups and from vastly different places such as Baluchistan, Kashmir, Sind, Rajastan, Egypt, Persia, Turkey and Punjab, they were collectively known as Afghans. Most of the men and their camels were first brought to Thomas Elder's station Umberatana, but after a few months most were transferred to Beltana where a camel breeding program was started. Soon the camels and their drivers were transporting materials and supplies to Elder's stations at Blanchewater and Murnpeowie.

In early 1870 the Afghans went on strike and most left Beltana and moved to Blinman. In 1873 Mahomet Saleh, an Afghan cameleer, left Beltana for Western Australia with explorer P.E. Warburton. William Christie Gosse was assisted by three Afghans in his attempt to find a way from the Finke River to Perth. Two years later he assisted Ernest Giles on one of his expeditions. J.W. Lewis, surveying the country north east of Lake Eyre in 1874 and 1875 used camels. Later Thomas Elder's teams carried desperately needed supplies for the starving diggers at Milparinka.

One early arrival was Haji Mulla Merban from Kandahar, Afghanistan. He came to Port Darwin and acted as leader among the Afghan camel drivers working for the Overland Telegraph Line. After a three year visit to India and Afghanistan he eventually settled in Adelaide. He married a European woman and acted as a peace maker between his countrymen, once settling a dispute between Abdul Wade and Gunny Khan, two wealthy camel owners. With the completion of the Adelaide Mosque in Gilbert Street in 1888 he also became the spiritual leader of the Afghan community in South Australia. He was buried at Coolgardie in 1897.

Many of these Afghans did extremely well in their chosen business. Abdul Wade had four hundred camels and sixty men working for him. Fuzzly Ahmed worked the Port Augusta - Oodnadatta line for many years before moving to Broken Hill. Faiz Mahomet, who arrived at the age of 22, settled in Marree where he operated as a Fowarding Agent and General Carrier. In 1892 he moved to Western Australia and worked from the Coolgardie gold fields with his brother Tagh Mahomet.

On 10 January 1896, while Faiz Mahomet was at the Murchison gold field, Tagh Mahomet was shot in the Coolgardie mosque by Goulham Mahomet. The case was reported in most newspapers both in Western Australia and South Australia. The Express and Telegraph called it 'Cold-Blooded Murder, Shot in a Mosque, Killed Whilst at Prayers'. Headlines like these were bound to attract attention.


Port Augusta Dispatch September 1888.

Wherever these Afghan cameleers settled, they lived in a separate part of town. Consequently many inland towns had three distinct sections, one for the Europeans, one for the Aborigines and a third section for the Afghans. Their areas became known as Afghan or Ghan Town. There was contact between the Aboriginal and Afghan groups but almost no contact between the Europeans and these two groups. Examples of this are well illustrated in Farina and Marree where even the cemeteries are divided along these lines.

Marree, with its high concentration of Afghans, was soon referred to as Little Asia. It also became the centre for inland transport with camel strings leaving regularly for the Birdsville, Oodnadatta and Strzelecki tracks, Broken Hill, the Northern Territory and the Western Australian gold fields. They often suffered from racial prejudice as a result of their religion, culture or the economic competition they provided for a declining number of jobs.

In 1884 nearly three hundred camels and fifty-six Afghans were landed at Port Augusta. The largest group landed in 1893 when four hundred camels and ninety-four men disembarked. During his election speech at Port Augusta, in March 1893, Alexander Poynton made it clear that he was against the importation of more Afghans and their camels. If elected 'he would put a prohibitive Poll Tax upon them'. A month later it was reported that 94 Afghans had landed at Port Augusta and 'meant business and money getting'. Contemporary opinions about their presence in the outback were not always very kind.

Each Afghan community had its own leader. In Oodnadatta it was Abdul Kadir and in Marree it was Bejah Dervish. Bejah, decorated for his military service, came from Baluchistan and later took part with L.A. Wells in the Calvert Expedition of 1896. In these communities the Afghans continued to live as they had always done, following the Muslim religion and customs. Most Afghans who came to Australia were single or if married left their wives behind as they expected to return wealthy in the not too distant future. Many remained single but others married Aboriginal women. Very few married white women.

Afghans provided almost all goods and services from South Australia to the Northern Territory. On a regular basis they left Marree, and later when the railhead was at Oodnadatta, with their camel teams for Stuart, later renamed Alice Springs. Some of the well known Afghans among them were Hector Mahomet, Peer Mahomet and Charlie Sadadeen.

In 1933 Ernestine Hill wrote, 'Within the high tin walls of the Afghan camps in all towns of the north line, white women are living, the only ones in Australia who have blended to any extent with the alien in our midst. Renouncing the association of the women of their own race, they have forsaken their own religion for the teachings of the Prophet and the life of the cities for the desert trail. Several of these have made the pilgrimage to Mecca'.

In 1880 Sub Inspector B.C. Besley suggested that the police in the north should use camels for the collection of statistics and census forms. His suggestion was taken up and camels were from then on used by all police in the north for all kinds of work. The Marree police used camels to patrol the outback until 1949.

When the camels, who were brought here because they could carry loads of up to 600 pounds over long distances with little food or water over almost any terrain, had outlived their usefulness, they became a pest. Most were shot when found on common land or without a registration disk. In this way hundreds were shot by the police to the delight of the pastoralists. Lasting legacies of the Afghans are the date palms which they planted wherever they went and the Ghan which was named after them.

http://www.southaustralianhistory.com.au/afghans.htm

hey, how come you did not post about the first terrorist we had here.
A muslim cleric camaleer who shot and killed aussies here.

he was the typical hothead who knew the koran perfectly well.