Thomas Elder makes first mass import of camels to Australia to link pastoral empire in South Australia's north

Thomas Elder, of South Australia's Elder, Smith & Co. pastoral and wool empire, imported camels to cart materials and supplies between his huge outback pastoral stations and for exploratory expeditions, such as the Lindsay in 1891, that he financed,
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

Thomas Elder arranged the first mass import of camels into Australia in 1866 to cart supplies between the huge network of outback pastoral properties he started with partner in Elder, Smith & Co. and brother in law Robert Barr Smith in the outback extremes of South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia.

South Australia’s first camel arrived at Port Adelaide in 1840 but was shot in 1846 after it caused the death of explorer John Horrocks. The push for camels to be imported into the colony continued but a Camel Troop Carrying Company was unable to get government funding in 1858.

Elder, who saw camels as the answer to the outback transport, sent Samuel Stuckey to India in 1862 to look for camels, and chartered the Blackwall in 1865 to load camels at Kurrachee in India. The first 121 camels landed at Port Augusta in 1866 and went to Elder’s Umberatana station before his Beltana Station in the Flinders Ranges became a centre for camel breeding. Thirty-one “Afghans” or “Ghans” (though from regions and ethnicity wider than Afghanistan) arrived with the camels to manage them. Soon the camels and their drivers were transporting materials and supplies to Elder's stations at Blanchewater and Murnpeowie.

In 1868 he chartered Henry Simpson's Kohinoor to return the "Afghans" and bring out another 60 camels and a fresh contingent of attendants. 

For the next 50 years, studs kept breeding a camel superior to the thousands more that were imported. The camels helped Elder and Barr Smith start Elder Smith & Co., one of the world’s largest wool-selling firms, from the pastoral stations.

Camels also were vital to opening vast regions of arid inland Australia. Explorers such as Ernest Giles used them, as did  J.W. Lewis, surveying the country north east of Lake Eyre in 1874-75. Elder financed the exploring expeditions of Warburton (1872), Ross (1874), Giles (1875), Lewis (1875) and Lindsay (1891)

A hundred camels proved indispensible in helping to construct the Adelaide-to Darwin telegraph line in 1872.

Rail and road superseded the camels in the early 20th Century when many were released into the outback where, superbly adapted, they bred up to numbers estimated to be near a million.