Camel Jockey

“Glenda Sutton is a camel jockey.” She trains, rides and races the critters. Photographer Tim Bonham is mixing a radio story for us on Glenda, based on his superb photo-audio slideshow, “The Boulia Camel Races,” in his multimedia collection.

According to some estimates there are upwards of a million feral camels roaming the Australian outback. Some end up as meat, some are culled in a seemingly futile attempt to keep their numbers down, some ruin sacred aboriginal watering holes by drowning in them. A select few end up in the outback town of Boulia, Queensland to run in the most important camel race in Australia. Glenda Sutton is a camel jockey and talked to me about the nature of camels and what it’s like to hurtle down the racecourse on the back of one.
—Tim Bonham