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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/feb/22/australian-camel-milk-us-market>
"Caroline’s sultry and soulful eyes are hooded and heavy-lashed.
“She’s straight out of central,” Paul Martin whispers, gazing at his star
performer with admiration.
Martin is not speaking of central casting – the camel farmer is referring to
the Central Desert region of Australia, where at least half a million of
Caroline’s kin roam wild.
Now far from feral, Caroline quietly chews cud as suction cups on her teats
gurgle away, hoses connected to 8-litre glass bottles filling up with pure
white milk.
Behind Caroline is Mildred, the second in a line of 10 in this open-air dairy
shed, an hour’s drive from the metropolis of Brisbane and thousands of
kilometres from Australia’s arid heart. Instead of red dunes and vast spinifex
plains, these camels are surrounded by lush pasture and a horizon of jagged and
wooded peaks.
After a decade of supplying the domestic camel milk market from this
130-hectare (320 acre) farm in south-east Queensland’s Scenic Rim – one of the
first commercial camel dairies in Australia – Martin wants to start supplying
the stuff to the US. He hopes to export 60,000 litres this year – the first
shipment in what he believes could one day become a major new commodity for a
country that, it was once said, was built off the sheep’s back and is now among
the world’s biggest beef exporters.
And camels like Caroline could hold the key to farms such as Martin’s in
building that market. Because she is producing more than double the milk of the
average wild-caught camel, Caroline’s bloodline could help build more
productive herds in decades to come.
“This is where the cow dairies started 200 years ago,” Martin says of the
genetic selection. “People might look back at this in 20 years’ time, when all
the camels are doing eight litres [of volume].”
Unlike cows, however, camels can “hold their milk”, he says – or refuse to
release it. So like all true divas, that means camels like Caroline have to be
coaxed, not coerced into their new roles in the dairy. Instead of pulling at
nose rings and shouting to train these big wild-caught beasts, Martin and his
milkers spend a lot of time thinking about camel psychology. He talks of
endorphin release, reward feeding, herd structure and keeping calves close by
the milking shed.
“Once you do that with these animals, they’re like a grass-eating labrador,”
Martin says. “They could sit on your lap … if they weren’t so heavy”."
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*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
