Speedboats of the desert

IVAN was a wild camel once. He was caught somewhere off the Birdsville Track 20 years ago, and soon proved his worth as a steady, good-natured worker.

Camel races Marree

IVAN was a wild camel once. He was caught somewhere off the Birdsville Track 20 years ago, and soon proved his worth as a steady, good-natured worker.

Not only that, he could run like the wind. In his racing heyday a decade ago he competed all over Queensland, as well as at Melbourne's Moonee Valley and Sydney's Randwick.

That's Ivan in the foreground, with camel wrangler Greg Emmett, at last year's Marree Camel Cup. It's the biggest event in the social calendar of this tiny South Australian town, which began life as a base for the "Afghan" cameleers who opened up the inland, then became a thriving railhead on the old Ghan line, and now survives by servicing the tourists who come to visit nearby Lake Eyre or tackle the Birdsville and Oodnadatta Tracks by 4WD.

Emmett and his mate Peter Chantler, who run a camel safari business together out of nearby Coward Springs, always take a mob of racers to the cup. "And we usually clean up," says Emmett. It's not an idle boast: their champion camel, Dish Dash, will be going for her sixth consecutive win at this year's event next Saturday. They have a star jockey, too, in Chantler's 17-year-old daughter, Grace. Racing camels is not for the faint-hearted - they can cover Marree's 400m red-dirt course in 30 seconds - but then, Grace is already something of a veteran. She's been doing this since she was 10.

As for Ivan, he's too long in the tooth these days to race, but he plays a vital role behind the scenes. The presence of this elder statesman has a calming effect on the younger camels, who can get pretty revved up and jumpy with pre-race nerves. Roping them to Ivan settles them down, so they can be led to the start-line and made to get down for the accustomed sitting start.

What happens next is hard to predict, though; most aren't natural racers. Says Emmett: "Some don't even get up. Some take off but go sideways, or suddenly sit down in the middle of the race. I've seen camels that are supposed to win just get up and slowly walk down the course, next to the railing, being patted by all the kids. It's as if they've already won, and are only interested in the celebrity."