The Star Online: Lifestyle: Arts & Fashion

Posted: 10 Dec 2011 11:04 PM PST

Muslim cameleers and their camels helped open up the land Down Under.

GOOL Mahomet was bound for India, where he had been born 73 years earlier. We know he was tall and of a "heavy" build. We know he had a scar on his forehead. We have a photo of him looking straight ahead and another in profile.

We know Gool wanted to return to Australia and was given three years in which to do so. By the time we reach his photo on the exhibition wall, we know very well that Australia owes men like him a debt of great gratitude.

Australia's Muslim Cameleers: Pioneers Of The Inland 1860s-1930s is a wonderful tribute to the thousands of men who left their countries to help create a new one. Without their skills and extraordinary creatures, it would have been even more difficult and dangerous – perhaps impossible – for white people to move inland.

Away from the coast, Australia was inhospitable, to say the least. Horses and other imported beasts of burden were no match for the terrain and the heat. To a few visionaries (most decision-makers would need a lot of convincing) camels were the best, the only solution.

They carried people, supplies and tools. They carried telegraph poles. They could withstand heat and long periods between watering holes. They might not have needed much in the form of comfort but they did need people who understood them. Australia needed cameleers as much as they needed camels.

The exhibition is everything I've come to expect and love from Malaysia's Islamic Art Museum (IAMM) in Kuala Lumpur. There is a huge and varied collection of artefacts, photographs, documents and even a video which gives dimension to a group underappreciated in their time.

Among the artefacts are textiles, including prayer mats. There are weapons for protection and branding irons to keep track of the camels. There are saddles, camel bells and a camel headdress of dyed wool, touchingly decorated with white buttons and glass beads. There are objects and creatures brought back from explorations, for example a white man's first encounter with the strange flora and fauna deep in the country.

There are objects taken from aborigines, the bones of strange animals and even a stuffed "Fat-tailed False Antechinus" which is about the size of a mouse, looks like a possum and has a disproportionately fat tail.

There are stunning photographs, some more than a century old, of cameleers standing next to their camels, barely reaching the great animals' shoulders. Several of the photographs have been enlarged so you can step close and examine the detail, the expressions. One unusual one captures a camel being unloaded from a ship. The hapless creature hangs in mid-air from a crane and one can only imagine what it is thinking after having been ripped from the life it knew, enduring a long sea voyage and now seeing a new world several metres below it.

The visual history consists, too, of wonderful drawings and sketches. Among these is the "first published image of Ayers rock" with camels in the foreground.

I was drawn to an enormous pack saddle near the exit. It seems crude, piled sackcloth and big sticks tied together with rope. However, take some time to examine the knot work and you will come to understand why Andrew Harper of the Outback Camel Company praised these saddles as being "endlessly adjustable and durable".

There are 16 other photographs alongside Gool Mahomet's, from enlarged documents that would allow the cameleers to go home then return to Australia. Gool is the oldest, the youngest is 29. We know their names, ages, hair colour and eye colour. We know that half of them had scars. We know how the documenters saw them in terms of build (Big, Medium, Slight, Heavy and one "Rather Stout") and complexion ("Dark" although there is one "Black", one "Light" and a couple of "Sallows".

The difference is not visible in the photographs. The cameleers represented numerous different origins, cultures and languages are varied but on the forms their nationality is always "Afghan".

Gratitude for the brave cameleers came late, but it did.

Australia's Muslim Cameleers: Pioneers Of The Inland 1960s-1930s is on at the Islamic Art Museum's Special Gallery 2 until Jan 21, 2012. Opening hours are 10am to 6pm, Monday to Sunday. Visit iamm.org.my, e-mail info@iamm.org.my or call 03-2274-2020 for details. A fun activity sheet for children called 'I am a Cameleer' is available at the museum's children's library.

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Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Ahad, 11 Disember 2011