Zada Khan

Zada Khan would have been only in his early twenties when he crossed much of the breadth of Australia from Kalgoorlie to Bourke and from there to Broken Hill - over 2,900 kilometres. Before this, he had to travel overland from Afghanistan through Pakistan to India to make a sea voyage which, in the late 1800s, would have taken months.

Afghan, Pakistani and Indian cameleers, collectively called Ghans, arrived in Australia from the 1860s and provided vital support to exploration and settlement throughout inland Australia. They delivered materials for the laying of train tracks, roads, telegraph lines and fences and transported goods between cattle and sheep stations and outback settlements. Zada Khan probably heard about the Ghan Camp in Wilcannia from cameleers working in Bourke.

There would have been at least 100 camels at the Ghan Camp in Wilcannia when Khan arrived. There was plenty of work around for cameleers, with the rush to sink mine shafts and build headframes and lay new tracks. 200 kilometres away was the booming mining town of Broken Hill. Khan soon had 55 camels of his own and had met and married Mary Payne who was part-Aboriginal from the Barkindji nation around Wilcannia. They had ten children, and many of their descendants still live in the area. Zada Khan became a prominent member of the wider Broken Hill community and the Afghan population. His was the first camel-drawn wagon team, and he was the Halal slaughterman for the Afghan community and a regular worshipper at the Broken Hill Mosque.

One of the enduring tales of Zada Khan’s many adventures was his job delivering the mail from Broken Hill to Wilcannia astride a bull camel. The stories less told are of the disrespect shown to the early Muslim community of central Australia, and to Khan himself. Given their remarkable contribution to the building of the nation, the cameleer’s stories are poorly recorded: their names not even appearing on ships’ passenger lists. Ghans were employed only on three-year contracts, were unable to bring their families to join them and, as in the case of Zada Khan, if they didn’t marry a white Australian they were refused citizenship. Once they built the railways, including the famous Great Northern Railway in Queensland, there was no more work for the Ghans, who became miners and merchants.

Zada Khan and the cameleers are true heroes of the Broken Hill story. They contributed in a remarkable way to the infrastructure of the nation, and to the multicultural community that is an intrinsic part of the heritage of the city.

Audio transcript available.