The Ballad of Abdul Wade

“Imagine if how you're remembered in history is by the opinions of your enemies,” says author Ryan Butta on what made him want to tell the story of Afghan cameleer Abdul Wade.

A flamboyant entrepreneur and highly successful and respected businessman in the 1890s, Wade’s story, is little known today. Nor is that of the many “Afghans” — a name given universally to the cameleers who were often from parts of India or Pakistan — and their camels, who truly were the lifeblood of the dry Australian interior.

Camels could travel days without water and needed to carry no feed as they could survive picking at native saltbush or mulga. In wet conditions, the soft-footed beasts could cover heavy clay plains that would sink a bullock wagon to its axles. For remote communities and far-flung sheep stations, their reliability made them invaluable, but this also brought them into conflict with their horse and bullock-drawn competitors.

“In Australia, at that time, wherever the rail finished you'd find camps of Afghans who were working there with their camels… taking supplies up to the stations and then also bringing back the wool clip from those outlying stations,” says Ryan, who first discovered this largely forgotten chapter of Australian history while flicking through a local history book in his childhood home of Brewarrina, and coming across a photograph of a camel train in the town’s main street.

“That was eye-opening to me. I'd spent a long time in this area, I was educated in Australia, gone to university and I'd never heard this story,” says Ryan.

Delving into what information he could find about Abdul Wade and his camel carrying business — based in the neighbouring town, and then river port, of Bourke — Ryan discovered that what few modern accounts there were painted him as a gambler, a boss who exploited his employees, and as a figure of ridicule.

But this was a very different picture of the man Ryan was discovering in the historical record.

“What I was reading about this guy in the modern history, et cetera, was very different to all that was written about him in the newspapers of the day,” says Ryan.

“He wasn't this sort of villainous character, he was actually a highly respected businessman and highly successful businessman. He was a really impressive character and his business interest ran right across Australia.

“He was a Freemason. He was friends with the Premier of Queensland. He had a massive mansion in Lane Cove. He was a regular at the Randwick races…”

“The villainous image of Abdul Wade has come down to us through his detractor and business competitors”, says Ryan.

“I felt he was being unfairly portrayed… and so the book was my attempt to try and set the records straight and put him back to where I felt he belonged in the history of modern Australia,” he says.

And it's not just Abdul Wade's story that needs to be corrected.

Ryan says that for too long there has been a blind spot in Australia's history when it comes to the role of Afghans and other people of colour.

Ryan’s book, The Ballad of Abdul Wade is a small step towards correcting the record for the Afghan cameleers.

“I just wanted to try and acknowledge and recognise that these men did a huge amount of work in contributing to Australia. We don't acknowledge that and I think that it’s important,” he says.

“After the book came out, I was contacted by a young Afghan man in Sydney.. he said reading the book it was the first time he felt that he had a place here in Australia.

“He came here as an Afghan and he’d felt Australia was built by white people and that he was a newcomer and had no connection and didn't belong here… reading that story, it made him feel like there was a place for him, that he had a claim on modern Australia as well. 

“So I think that's why it's important that we get this history right and that we tell this history.”

Ryan Butta will be speaking at Orange City Library on Tuesday, October 25, at 5.30pm; and at Cowra Library on Wednesday, October 26 at 10.30am.