MARREE, Australia: Camels with “a bit of fire in them” raced in a remote Australian outback town this weekend at an annual event celebrating the desert beasts first imported in the mid-19th century.
Hundreds of spectators descended on Marree, which has a population of 65 and lies nearly 600 kilometers (370 miles) north of the South Australian capital Adelaide, for a 13-race spectacle on Saturday known as the Marree Camel Cup.
More than 10,000 camels were imported into Australia from 1840, many of them released into the wild with the development of railways and then the arrival of motor vehicles in the 1920s.
Now, estimates of the wild camel population range from 300,000 to a million animals.
Trainer Kyrraley Woodhouse, who started camel racing professionally in 2013, said most of her camels had been taken from the wild to run in the Marree event, which drew more than a dozen competitors.
