Official News page 7

REAL LIFE NEWS: AUSTRALIAN TOWN BESEIGED BY CAMELS

by Hazed

Pity the poor residents of Docker River, a town in the Australian Outback. They can't step outside their houses without running into dromedaries!

There are 6,000 of the feral camels rampaging around the community, causing chaos in their search for water. They are trampling through homes, breaking water tanks and knocking over fire hydrants, generally being a thundering great nuisance.

The boss of the town, Graham Taylor, reported that the camels first started to show up about five weeks ago, but more appeared every day. He said, "What seems to be happening is that they are coming into the town looking for water for four or five days - they have a drink and they linger... and more and more keep arriving. The numbers are building daily."

"Some people are opening their windows and all they see is camels," he added. They are so desparate for water that as well as breaking fire hydrants and drinking troughs, some had resorted to licking drops of water from the evaporation cooling systems on the roofs of houses.

Camels were introduced to Australia from the 1840s and were very valuable as pack animals as the vast Outback was opened up. However, their descendants now number around a million and they frequently cause problems.

The Northern Territory local government has promised emergency funds to deal with the problem: the camels will be herded out of town by chopper crews, and then shot.

Stop Press: More Australian camel news

The effect of the drought on camels isn't just causing a problem for the inhabitants of Docker River. So many camels have died of thirst in the Outback that their rotting corpses are polluting vital waterholes.

The Central Land Council, which administers Aboriginal land in the arid center of the country, said the corpses are poisoning vital water supplies. "Some fall into waterholes and won't be able to get out so they'll rot within the water," said David Alexander, the council's lead management chief. "Others will chase the last remains of any water in these areas and start to compete with each other. We're ending up with these grisly scenes of camels in every stage of life, death and decay around waterholes."

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