Istan and Jafar
near Perth — 1999-11-21 – 1999-12-03
The camel problem is our biggest worry, because – no camels, no crossing Australia. Besides working on our caravan, we are looking for those animals that will be so important to us. Marry, the camel man from Perth, who some months ago offered us five of his camels with all equipment included for 17,500 Australian dollars, has unfortunately already sold some of them. Luckily he still owns two castrated bulls by the name of Istan and Jafar. His wife Liz seizes the opportunity and now asks the handsome amount of 7000 dollars plus 1000 per saddle. I want to know how come the camels cost so much more now, and she replies: “You just messed around too long, and now they simply cost more.” Since time’s too short for us to look for other animals, and camels as a rule are not exactly easy to find, we accept right there on the phone so that they won’t be snatched away from us.
Tanja and I know what it means to own camels whose character traits are unknown to us. It may even end deadly, and after all, we have to consider that we are going to be at their mercy in a few months. However, it is important to mention that Marry is known for training his camels well, which guarantees us that we are not getting some lashing-out and biting monsters. Inspector Gadget, Tanja and I collect them with a jeep and trailer from a bush terrain approximately 50 km away, and we note at once that they are two well-bred, beautiful animals indeed.
Although we originally planned to train the camels ourselves, we are now forced by the events caused by Tom to buy animals that are already trained. Unfortunately that does not mean that we won’t have any work with them, as we must re-train them to suit our purposes, and that is going to take us at least another two months.
OUR LAST EXPEDITION MEMBER, KADESCH
After an endless search for camel no. 5, Inspector Gadget, the camel man, finally offers to sell us an animal from his own 18-headed herd. We are overjoyed when he introduces Kadesch to us, an 18-year-old castrated camel bull. “He is a mount”, I say patting his mighty neck.
In November Kadesch with his 800 to 900 kg of weight changes hands for the handsome amount of 4000 dollars and thus completes our team. In the days to follow we take Kadesch along to join us on our training runs in the near pine forest and in the bush. It is important to find out his character traits ourselves to be able to decide how we can use him in the end. Already in those first runs it turns out that he is terribly greedy, and when it comes to biting into one of the shrubs in passing by he knows how to assert himself.
