Some of these people had married members of South Australia's small but significant Afghan community, descendants of the cameleers who had ‘opened up’ the northern trade routes.
All of the cameleers were attending to their animals.
The 2001 Australian film, ‘Serenades’, told the story about the Afghan cameleers in outback Australia and their encounter with Europeans and Aborigines.
But there it was again in the faces of the cameleers and the spectators.
Bob Adams has been there, distributing hay from the hay-truck and generally helping all of the cameleers with their camels.
The conflicts over labour often developed because pastoralists preferred to employ cameleers to cart supplies, rather than Europeans with their horses or bullock teams.
The reference here, of course, is to the historic presence of Afghan cameleers and their place of worship on the site.
The Holland Park Mosque on Brisbane's Southside was established as a Muslim house of prayer by Afghan cameleers in 1907.
However in 1866 Stuckey succeeded in bringing out more than a hundred camels and, as nobody knew how to handle camels, 31 Afghan cameleers as well.
Transport and communication between Innamincka and Farina greatly improved when Afghan cameleers took over and government wells were sunk along the track.
Bourke and Wills brought the first cameleers to Australia as early as 1860, but many more soon followed, single or without their wives, with the hope of making their fortunes in the desert.
They continue to talk about the friendship that existed between the Afghan cameleers and try to promote that further.
Drovers with mobs of cattle of a thousand or more travelling south, and Afghan cameleers driving camel trains of up to a hundred camels north carrying station supplies, were common before the days of motor transport.
Maybe we could add to these with public artwork about the Afghan cameleers coming to Sadadeen?
Nearly 1000 people greeted 17 cameleers and their camels who arrived in Alice Springs on Saturday after three weeks trekking through remote and difficult country.
It was named after the Afghan cameleers who once travelled this route.
