Afghan Cameleer Coins minted in Australia

The Royal Australian Mint is commemorating the adventures of Afghan cameleers in opening up the inland of Australia with special coins for their series called ‘Pioneers of Inland Transport.’

Afghan cameleers—Afghans with their caravans of camels—played an important role in the early European exploration and settlement of inland Australia during the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Royal Australian Mint is paying tribute to the part of the cameleers from Afghanistan wiht the release of two coins: (1) a special 50 cent uncirculated coin, and (2) a 50 cent silver proof collectable coin.

Camels were well suited to travelling across the harsh dry heart of Australia—into the outback—with their hardy handlers. Small groups of camel drivers (the cameleers) were brought to Australia between the 1860s and 1930s from British India, Central Asia and Afghanistan, and the Middle East. Collectively, they were referred to as Afghans or Ghans. The famous inland Australian railway was called The Ghan after the Afghan cameleers.

Both coins depict the same image of an Afghan camel driver in traditional clothes, alongside a camel wearing a decorative harness and back packs. A train, or caravan, of pack-camels appears at the bottom of the coins and the edges are decorated in a traditional Islamic pattern.

https://www.ramint.gov.au

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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