SIT, HUMPIE, SIT!

I suppose you have heard this story in the sanitized versions, but here it is in all the randy truth. Her name is – er, was - Pam Weaver and she had just celebrated her 60th birthday in March. On this occasion her husband Noel and her daughter had wanted to give their mother something special. They lived on a sheep and cattle station outside the small village of Mitchell, deep in the outback of Queensland; a place with few comforts and fewer rewards. And Pam was a real jillaroo, an experienced station hand trained as a veterinary nurse, who could and did repair fences, birth animals, sheer sheep, herd cattle, look after the books, cook and do the housework, too. So Noel wanted to make this birthday special. The initial plan had been to buy Pam a llama but they proved too expensive. So father and daughter decided instead to buy their mother a camel, and a young male because they were cheaper then females. Little did the family know that with this choice of birthday gift they had set in motion a tragic chain of events that would result in droma-cide.
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Mitchell is village of 1,200 souls between Roma and Charlyville astride the Warrego highway (the A2) which cuts west to east across Queensland. Mitchell features wide tree lined streets and “classical colonial architecture” against a bend in the “delightful Marona River”. Up the road apiece is the Camarvon National Forest. Brisbane, the territorial capital, is a distant 600 km or 372 miles away to the East.
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This is the heart of Booringa Shire, “…a busy rural district,…”which has dreams of one day becoming “…an important stop on the tourist route to the outback of Queensland.” But to date the biggest tourist attractions in town are the Courthouse at the Western end of Cambridge street where the “last of the Bushrangers”, Patrick and James Kenniff, were brought after their capture, and the Frank Forde Room at the Maranoa Art Gallery and Library, named after the local boy who became the Australian Prime Minster famous for having the shortest tenure in office, just six days.
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Pam’s exotic new 5 month old baby still required bottle feeding when he first arrived, but with each passing day, as he grew to 152 kg, 335 lbs, and more mature, his behavior became “bizarre”. He took to assaulting the pet goat, crowding him and forcing him to the ground. ‘Humpie’ was now 10 months old, and more than once the Weavers had to rescue the goat from suffocation from beneath him. If the Weavers had been more familiar with camels they might not have described ‘Humpie’s’ behavior as bizarre.
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Camels were introduced to Australia beginning in 1840, and thousands were used to carry supplies for railroad and telegraph line construction across the wastes and empty places known collectively as the outback Today there are perhaps half a million feral camels wandering the deserts of central and west central Australia, and their populations are increasing. To quote from a study of Camel behavior;
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“The male is normally docile and easily controlled, however, in the rutting season he can become so aggressive that he is dangerous and cannot be handled. He is extremely restless. He blows a balloon-like flap out of the side of his mouth which is called a palatal flap …The lips are often covered with saliva. The glands between the ears secrete a dark, bad-smelling, watery secretion. This area is constantly rubbed against all objects in the surroundings…The back legs are spread, and the tail is then beaten against the penis…courting and mating can be very violent. If the male selects a female and she will not go down quietly…he will bite at her neck and eventually force her to the ground. There the female utters her guttural protest, while the male…straddles her. Copulation lasts for about fifteen minutes.”
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It’s not a pretty picture. And yet I wonder how many women and girls found that this description of male behavior sounded more than vaguely familiar. But, as the Arabic proverb says, “Death is a black camel that lies down at every door. Sooner or later you must ride the camel.” Or, it seems, sooner or later the camel must ride you.
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On Saturday, August, 18th, 2007, Noel Weaver returned home about 6:30 pm (Australian Standard Time) after tending to his stock and found the house empty. Dinner was cooking in the oven, a cup of half drunk tea was on the table and a tea pot was whistling on the stove. Noel assumed Pam was in the back yard attending to the chickens and other household livestock. To his surprise the camel was out of his pen and wandering about the backyard. And crumpled on the ground was Pam’s lifeless body.
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Detective Senior Sergeant Craig Gregory of the Roma police, who were called to the scene, said that Noel was devastated. The Sergeant surmised, “She was out doing her chores of feeding all the other animals. From the condition of her body and the ground around it Gregory said it was likely “she hadn’t been there very long until he got home”.


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It was clearly, he said, death by dromedary. Pam Weaver had "one definite footprint" on her face and one on her arm” and the camel had then "rolled around the ground a bit". Either Pam had been smothered or she died of a heart attack. In short, she had been humped to death.
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It‘s not a funny way to go. Anyone who has ever suffered having their leg “humped” by an overly friendly dog can imagine having the same experience with something three times the size of a St. Bernard, twice as insistent and producing four times as much saliva and other bodily fluids.
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And now we know why Catherine the Great never drafted camels into the Russian cavalry.
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