In the Musgrave Ranges

by Conrad H. Sayce

The man went on to explain that he had arranged to travel north with a string of camels which was leaving the township the same afternoon. They would go as far as Dingo Creek and wait there for the train which was being sent down from Oodnadatta. "That's the best arrangement I can make," said Peter. "If you'd care to come along, now's your chance. You won't have much to do with camels, anyway. But don't mind saying if you'd rather not."

Both boys protested that they weren't a bit scared of camels and that they were anxious to go right away; so, after dinner, they got their belongings together and followed Peter to the outskirts of the town. Here they found a line of fifty camels kneeling in the sand ready to start.

Most of them were heavily loaded with stores for Oodnadatta which had come up on the same train as the boys had travelled by. More than a score of men had helped to unload the trucks that morning, and to arrange the bags and cases and bales ready for being roped to the camel-saddles. The boys were very much amused by the antics of three or four calf-camels. They looked like big lambs on stilts, except that their necks were longer. They frisked about and did not seem at all afraid; but when Vaughan tried to stroke one of them, it bumped into him and knocked him over, which made everybody laugh.

The man in charge of the camels was not an Afghan; he was an Indian named Becker Singh, a big, handsome, intelligent man, and he wore the same rough sort of clothes and hat as any Australian in the back country. He showed Peter the two camels he had chosen for the boys, and, after testing them himself, the bushman showed his two friends how to arrange their blankets on the iron framework of the saddle in order to make a comfortable seat, how to mount, and the easiest way to sit.

"Don't you try to do anything," he told them. "Just get your feet into the stirrups and sit loosely."

This was good advice and saved the boys the usual discomfort which comes to those who ride a camel for the first time. They had no need to guide their camels, for all the animals were tied one behind the other. When everything was ready, Becker walked slowly down the long line, giving a final inspection to each of his charges, then whistled in a peculiar way.

All the camels stood up at once. To the boys, this was the most uncomfortable part of their experience, for a camel has four distinct movements in getting up or down, and, unless the rider is used to them, they are rather startling. But once their mounts were really up, the rest was plain sailing. They swayed gently forward and back with each stride of the camel and enjoyed the motion very much, and could see over the country from their high position much better than they could from horseback or on foot.

The three days' journey to the Dingo Creek Bridge was accomplished without any accident, though the new method of travel and the new country passed through were full of interest to the two boys. Each evening the long line of stately animals was coiled round in a big circle at the camping-place, and the camels were made to kneel down while their loads were unroped and their saddles taken off. Then the black boys who were helping Decker Singh hobbled the camels and drove them off to pick up what food they could find during the night. In the morning the same boys brought them in and made them kneel in the right places to be loaded again for the day.

To have their meals and to sleep near the packs was a novelty which the boys very much enjoyed. The blazing fire with the billies catching the flame, the meal of bread and meat, the hour or two afterwards when they lolled on the sand while Peter smoked and told yarns, and then the cool quiet night with the myriad stars above them; these things made the boys forget the little discomforts they were bound to encounter.

On the second day, towards the middle of the afternoon, a black dot appeared on the horizon, growing bigger and bigger as they approached it. The sun beat down on the bare plains and made the whole landscape quiver with heat, so that things in the distance looked blurred and it was impossible to tell what they were. In this instance the object proved to be a group of date-palms growing round a pool made by a bore-pipe. On all sides of this little oasis stretched the barren desert, and it was quite easy to believe that no man had been able to live in that part of the country before this bore had been put down.