The Broken Hill Historical Society (BHHSoc) has its next meeting on Monday evening, 12 August, 7 pm with a guest speaker on an area of history that fascinates every visitor we have – camels and cameleers.

This meeting falls bang in the middle of the exciting weeks of the Mundi Mundi Bash. So it’s just in time for the many visitors already travelling into town, some staying here, some at Silverton, ie those who come a bit early before the Bash event.

While the Bash is exciting, it’s super exciting that the Society’s very special guest speaker is Gary Cook.

Gary is a local researcher and historian. And he is also the person you’ll find assisting at the Mosque Museum (one of the Society’s Heritage buildings, in the area still known as Cameltown) every Friday from 10 am to 12.30 pm.

Gary will be telling the story of Harry the Camel (the first camel in Australia) and John Ainsworth Horrocks,(owner of Harry and a settler/explorer).

Our local community is proud of what cameleers brought to the early development of this region following colonial settlement in the 1800s, and any number of people in this community has Afghan cameleer ancestry, including Bobby Shamroze, Coordinator/Caretaker of the Mosque Museum.

Go to the Society website’s page on the Mosque Museum, https://brokenhillhistoricalsociety.com/…/mosque-museum/, and you’ll find Bobby’s story, and so much more about the cameleers’ contribution to our big chunk of the outback.

Everyone is very welcome to come next Monday night, whether visitor, community member or Society member. We meet in the Ralph Wallace Centre at the back of the Synagogue of the Outback complex at 165 Wolfram Street.

We hope to see you there!

(Jan Mahyuddin for BHHSoc)