Dangerous cargo

Temperature - Day (maximum):
approx. 32 degrees

Anna Plains Station – 29.04.2001

Although today is Sunday and Luke has his first day off after weeks of exhausting and long cattle herding, he helps us bring the camels back to the farm. At 8 o’clock in the morning we sit in his jeep and drive to a remote station area called Eranbee to pick up a large trailer. Unfortunately, the side walls are welded with iron bars that extend like an archway from left to right, limiting the loading height to two meters. The height is fine for horses, but camels cannot walk under the poles. Luke is a man of action. He quickly unpacks the welding machine, which is stowed on the loading area of his Ute, and simply cuts off the pipe connection. “So now your animals can walk in with their heads held proudly high and feel at ease,” he says with a grin.

A few kilometers further on, an old Toyota Landcruiser is parked in the pasture. “I have to check a few windmills later. When the camels are on the trailer, you drive them back in this jeep and I’ll follow,” Luke explains. After he simply uses his four-wheel-drive to push the old bowl, on which hardly anything seems to work, the engine starts. Slowly I follow him until we are back at Rockys where our camels are waiting for us in the fence. Luke then maneuvers the trailer right up to a cattle pen which is used to separate the cattle, brand them, or just to work on them. Now that the cattle have been rounded up, the enclosures are unused. Tanja and I are still puzzled about how to get our camels onto the trailer, because after our last transport experience almost two years ago we know that they hate running onto a trailer. Even if we manage to load our trained guys, how are we going to do it with the wild ones? Luke, who has spent his entire life working with animals, explains his plan: “So, first we drive the camels out of the large fence through this gate into the small 20 × 20 meter cattle enclosure. Once they are inside, we maneuver the trailer into the gate opening. Then we’ll detach these movable three-meter-long aluminum fence sections from each other and push them together until your camels have no way out but to march onto the trailer.” “Sounds perfect,” we say, convinced by the simple idea.

It doesn’t take long until we have our 7 desert animals in the small cattle enclosure described above, whose aluminum fence is transportable and can be dismantled into individual parts. Such sturdy fence sections are very practical because you can erect reliable animal fencing in a short space of time wherever you think it is important. Suddenly our boys are behaving as if they had never had any contact with humans. They all huddle together in a corner and, of course, have nothing else on their minds but to step onto the trailer. On the contrary, the steel vehicle seems to scare them terribly. As Jafar proved to be quite courageous during the expedition and showed little fear of fences, buildings and dark passages, we want to try it with him first. So I have no choice but to climb into the small fence we’ve pushed together. As soon as they notice me, the group of camels splits up with their massive bodies, run past me close to the left and right and crowd into the other corner. I’m sweating with nervousness because I have to get so close to the animals that any of their kicks could hurt me badly. “It’s all right, boys. I’m not going to hurt you. Just take it easy,” I say to them reassuringly. Suddenly one of the wild boys feels threatened by my proximity, turns to me in a flash, runs a step or two towards me with his head held high, only to dash past my left side at the last second. My heart almost dropped because this action happened so quickly that I couldn’t even get out of the way. “It’s all right, boys. No problem. You should just walk on this stupid trailer,” I hear myself saying to the animals. Patience, yes patience, is now the only way to avoid an accident. I walk very slowly towards Jafar, who is looking in my direction with his head at this moment. “You’re a lovely boy. Yes, a very nice one,” I say and grab his halter that we put on him yesterday. Jafar allows the nose leash to be attached to his nose peg without resistance and the lead rope to be clicked onto the halter. Gently, with further coaxing, I pull him to the loading ramp of the trailer. It takes another five minutes before he finally takes his first step on it and runs onto the trailer as if in slow motion. I immediately set him down, tie his front feet together and his lead rope to a crossbar of the trailer. Then I fetch Istan who follows his mate Jafar without causing any major difficulties. I set him down next to Jafar, kneel down next to the massive animal and put the cord around his neck to tie his front feet together. If he were to jump up at that moment for any reason, he would crush me against the iron bars. Again, my heart beats with excitement as if it wants to burst, but I have no other chance, because someone has to do this job.

As always, Sebastian causes a lot of trouble when he has to get on a trailer or comes close to man-made structures. He yells and screams and doesn’t move an inch on the loading ramp. While Tanja has taken over the important film work, Luke has climbed onto the fence and is swinging a large plastic pipe up and down behind his butt. Sebastian opens his eyes and is obviously frightened by the large pipe that makes such strange noises as if a ghost were living in it and wanting to bite his beautiful ass at any moment. Finally, he takes several cautious steps forward and climbs into the prison. Contrary to his character, Goola is quite relaxed when he goes into captivity and so, after about 2 hours of intensive and exciting work, we have the first four expedition partners ready for transportation. We pick up Hardie and the two newcomers later with the second truck. We chose this order because Hardie is the most independent of them all and is unlikely to cause much trouble if we put him on the trailer first like Jafar.

I’ll accompany you as far as the place with the deep sand hollows along the path. Once you are through there, you will reach the highway after about 10 kilometers. I’ll see you again at Anna Plains,’ says Luke and gets into his car. I start the engine of the rusty Toyota, which pulls its enormously heavy load over the sandy road without showing any weakness. When Luke realizes that we’re not stuck, he turns off into a side path a little later. “Are the camels okay?” I ask Tanja. She leans her upper body out of the window to take a look at our rare passengers. “You seem to be enjoying it,” she replies. Suddenly I notice a rumbling. The Jeep is difficult to steer and I immediately take my foot off the gas pedal. “I think we’ve got a flat tire!” I shout. “Oh no, that can’t be true,” Tanja moans. It actually tore the right rear tire of the Toyota. Luke turned into the side path no less than a minute ago and didn’t notice anything about the breakdown. Unfortunately, I can’t find a spare wheel or jack on the loading area of the Ute. Then I try to contact him with the radio. “Luke, this is Denis. We’ve broken down. Can you hear us?” Apart from a hotter croak, there is no response from the loudspeaker. “Apparently the device is faulty. We have no choice but to wait here for Luke,’ I say, shrugging my shoulders.

The sun beats down on us from a cloudless sky. We don’t expect Luke to be here for two to three hours. Tanja tries to take a nap in the passenger compartment while I lie down on the floor next to the jeep to do the same. Time passes slowly. After an hour I feel hungry. We haven’t eaten anything since breakfast. It is already 3.30 p.m. when Tanja discovers a tin of beans behind the driver’s seat by pure chance. I don’t hesitate for long and open it. At first Tanja doesn’t want any of it, but after I pour the beans into my mouth with a loud: “Hmm, oh delicious, Hmmm,” she demands her share. After more than two hours, Luke’s voice comes on the radio: “Denis and Tanja, if you can hear me, answer with two clicks.” Tanja immediately picks up the microphone and presses the talk button twice. “Okay, if you’re still on Rocky’s answer with two clicks.” Tanja presses the talk button twice again. “I’ll be with you in a few minutes,” it replies from the loudspeaker. It’s not long before we hear the sound of his jeep’s engine. Luke laughs like he always does when we see him. He gets out of his ute and shakes his head. “I’m sorry I let you roast in the sun for so long,” he says and looks at the flat tire. We quickly unloaded a spare tire from his Toyota and replaced the broken one. Luke works with concentration and routine. 10 minutes later we drive on. Once on the highway, we can’t drive more than 40 kilometers per hour because of the heavy load and the old vehicles. I am glad that there is hardly any traffic on the Great Northern Highway at this time of year and, above all, no police. If there was an inspection, they would certainly take this old box out of circulation. From time to time, one of the camels wants to stand up, whereupon the trailer begins to swing precariously. Startled, I steer against it and slow down. We hope we don’t get another flat tire during this bumpy ride and are glad to finally reach Anna Plains Homestead after two hours of driving. Unloading Jafar, Istan, Sebastian and Goola causes us no problems and is done quickly. John Stoat made the paddocks available to us for our stay. In this way, we have the best conditions for training our new animals.

Due to the flat tire we lost too much time to get Hardie and the two new ones today. It’s already dusk and we don’t want to load and transport them at night under any circumstances. We agree with Luke to leave at 5:30 tomorrow morning to finish our mission. Luke invites us for a few more beers. Once again we have a lively chat with the head stockman and his wife until we return to our palace, tired and exhausted, to have dinner. Suddenly the phone rings. “Denis speaking,” I announce. “Denis! I can’t go to Rocky’s with you at 5:30 tomorrow morning. I’ve just been fired,’ I hear Luke’s voice, which leaves me speechless. Of course we talk about the reasons for his dismissal, but since this is a live report, I don’t want to write about it. We have learned that it is often better to stay out of the political situation. For one thing, there are always different sides and for another, we are there for far too short a time to be able to form an opinion. Of course I feel sorry for Luke and we wonder how we are going to get the other camels onto the trailer without his help.