The Library received cultural clearance from the Ara Irititja Project, to display this image. Reproduction rights are owned by State Library of South Australia.
This image may be printed or saved for personal research or study. Use for any other purpose requires permission from the State Library of South Australia and the Ara Irititja Project.
To request approval, complete the Permission to publish form.

Aboriginal children riding Mountford's camel, Musgrave Ranges.

Charles Mountford took this photograph on the 1940 University of Adelaide Expedition to Central Australia.

Mountford writes in Brown Men and Red Sand of a school picnic while he and his wife were at Ernabella Mission:

The camels were fully laden. On the leader was my wife, with one child before and another behind her, and everywhere they could be tied were slabs of raw meat, billycans, and small bags of flour. Lauri's camel was groaning under a similar load, and the third was lined with children, six of them. Those who could hung on to some part of the saddle; those who could not clung to their companions like limpets. How they stayed there was a puzzle, but they did, and enjoyed the experience immensely. The children who walked were not distressed, for they knew their turn to have a ride would come later. (p. 33)

At the end of the day the picnic party returned to Ernabella and as night fell a cold wind blew and Mountford's party and the teacher walked to keep warm, leaving the camels for the children who crowded five to each camel and '... where all, except those on the ends of the line, were kept warm by the contact of the bodies of their companions.' (p. 35)

Mountford, Charles P. Brown men and red sand: journeyings in wild Australia Sydney: A. & R., 1964

Wallace, Phyl Children of the desert Melbourne: Thomas Nelson (Australia), 1973

Haagen, Claudia Bush toys: Aboriginal children at play Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 1994

Ara Irititja Project

SA Memory: Taking it to the edge: Exploration in South Australia. Did you know? Camels