![\"Warwick](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/355892.jpg\" "\\"Warwick")
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ROBE, Aug 8 \u2014\u00a0Far from their origins in the Arabian desert, hundreds of thousands of camels roam outback Australia where they are used for wild races, an alternative milk source and even to make beer.<\/p>\n
Imported by British colonists in the 19th century for transport but set free when the advent of cars rendered them redundant, estimates of the camel population in Australia range from 300,000 to up to a million.<\/p>\n
Many of them are feral, roaming the outback and generally causing trouble\u2014competing with stock for food, destroying fences, fouling waterholes and damaging Indigenous cultural sites, authorities say.<\/p>\n
But domesticated they also represent a modest export market, with Australian farmers selling their milk and sometimes even the camels whole \u2014\u00a068 so far in 2026 heading to Malaysia and Indonesia.<\/p>\n
Exports of camel meat totalled over US$3.9 million in 2024, according to trade data.<\/p>\n
On the Humpalicious farm in the South Australian town of Robe, owner and former sea captain Warwick Hill sings the benefits of his fluffy dromedarian friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re very nice to work with. They\u2019re very easily domesticated,\u201d he told AFP between camel cuddles.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re kind and fair with them, they generally reciprocate.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Warwick Hill, owner of the Humpalicious farm, holding produce from his camels on the outskirts of the South Australian town of Robe. \u2014 AFP pic<\/p>\n
Milking it<\/strong><\/p>\n Camel milk\u2014which he sells for US$14\u00a0a litre\u2014has a multitude of health benefits, especially for those with allergies, he maintains.<\/p>\n And Hill insists it\u2019s a far superior dairy compared to the \u201coverprocessed\u201d mainstream options.<\/p>\n \u201cWe haven\u2019t met anybody that can\u2019t have camel milk,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s one of the closest milks to human milk.\u201d<\/p>\n Business isn\u2019t huge\u2014the farm supplements its income from the camels with tourism and a homestay.<\/p>\n \u201cThe market should be huge, but the price is prohibitive,\u201d Hill said, pointing to the costs of labour and the animals\u2019 relatively low milk output.<\/p>\n But the milk has a special quality, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody would, once they tasted camel milk, prefer to drink it over anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n Across town, the Robe Town Brewery has found another use for the camel.<\/p>\n The Humpalicious farm\u2019s camels are fed grain left over from the brewing process, and their dung is then used to smoke the malt for the beer.<\/p>\n Sold in a dark brown bottle emblazoned with a picture of a camel dressed as the Virgin Mary, \u201cHoly Smokes\u201d porter is sold as a \u201crich, dark and very smokey\u201d drop.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not for the faint hearted\u2014a bottle comes in at 8.2 per cent alcohol volume.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t really taste like dung,\u201d brewer Maris Biezaitis hastened to add.<\/p>\n \u201cIn fact, it tastes and smells a bit more like a peat-smoked malt. Smoky beer.\u201d<\/p>\n To the races\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Further north, others are deploying the camels to more daredevilish ends.<\/p>\n In the remote town of Maree, roughly 600 kilometres (370 miles) north of Adelaide, the camels transform from beasts of burden to powerful racers.<\/p>\n Every year, hundreds of spectators descend on the small town for the annual Marree Camel Cup.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s Marree Camel Cup winner was Young Gun, ridden by Patrick Dennis.<\/p>\n Joanne Bell, 55, was racing for the first time\u2014and took a tumble during the contest.<\/p>\n She told AFP she \u201cfell in love\u201d with camels when she was working at a petting farm.<\/p>\n \u201cAlways wanted to be a jockey but never had the opportunity to ride horses,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo camels was the next thing and a jockey\u2019s a jockey, whether it\u2019s a camel or a horse.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI love it because it\u2019s just something different,\u201d camel racer Kyrraley Woodhouse told AFP.<\/p>\n The key is to pick a camel with the right personality, she explained.<\/p>\n \u201cYou would want a little bit of temper, a little bit of fire in them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cSomething that\u2019s got a heart, that\u2019s going to run.\u201d<\/p>\n Muslim cameleers\u2014many from Afghanistan and other parts of Central and South Asia\u2014were brought to Australia in the 1860s to harness the animals for transport in the arid interior.<\/p>\n Some of their descendants remain in Marree.<\/p>\n \u201cIt all revolved around the camels. The reason the camels were brought here was because they were so resilient,\u201d Greg Burk, whose great-grandfather came to Australia in the 1880s, told AFP.<\/p>\n \u201cCamels are still dear to my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n Back at Humpalicious, farmer Hill said he hoped his efforts and those of others could teach people to love his humpbacked homies.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re quite a pleasant animal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople come here and they see 50 well-behaved, very nice, cuddly, smoochy camels.\u201d \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 ROBE, Aug 8 \u2014\u00a0Far from their origins in the Arabian desert, hundreds of thousands of camels roam…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1138660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3847],"tags":[309591,309592,309593,210482,309594,70,16,15,309595,1717],"class_list":["post-1138659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-humpalicious-farm","tag-marree-camel-cup","tag-patrick-dennis","tag-robe","tag-robe-town-brewery","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-warwick-hill","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117062444498442049","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1138660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}