This is the biggest camel festival in the Gulf, where 30,000 camels compete for serious money – 20 million Saudi riyals. That’s around AU$6.6 million by my calculations.

But all hell broke loose after 12 camels were disqualified for getting Botox injections to “make their pouts look more alluring.”

Fancy that, eh! I would have thought you’d need more than Botox to make a camel alluring, wouldn’t you?

A couple of years ago we received an email from our daughter Lizzie, who was travelling in Egypt.  

She told us the local lads were showing quite a bit of interest in her blonde hair, telling us the best offer she had received was five million camels.  

My good wife Barbara was naturally mortified and immediately emailed back saying, "You are worth much more than that, my dear."  

While Barbara was looking for a bigger dowry, I was more concerned about where we’d put five million dromedaries.  

Camels are fairly cumbersome currency, aren’t they?  

Imagine going to the Mittagong RSL and trying to put one through a poker machine.  

But out in the desert, camels are gold. The measure of wealth of a Bedouin tribe is not in gross domestic product or how much cash they have, but how many camels are tethered in the sand dunes behind their tent.  

In Bedouin courts, compensation and punishment are dished out in camels. Get caught stealing and you could be up for 10 camels as retribution.  

In light of that, I think five million camels was a pretty generous offer for our daughter.

I once had a work colleague, Bobby Gibson from down Buxton way, who owned a camel. Boris was his name. Not sure how Bob came about owning Boris. Maybe won him in a raffle at the pub. Who knows?  

Strange animal to have as a pet, though.

Australia has the largest herd of camels in the world after having been imported to Australia from Afghanistan and other places in the 1800s to do the heavy lifting in the outback.

But then came the invention of motor vehicles and camels became redundant. They were turned out into the scrub to run feral. With no predators and plenty of wide open spaces, they flourished and are now a huge pest, drinking valuable water, damaging waterholes and eating grass. 

In many countries, camels are an integral part of the landscape.

I remember seeing one on our first day in Rajasthan and almost pulled a hamstring in my eagerness to take a photograph. Then we saw another camel, and another and another. I took happy snaps of camel trains moving purposefully across the sand dunes, camels pulling carts, people riding camels, others loaded with pack saddles or just mooching around in the desert.

By the second day in Rajasthan I couldn’t even bother to get out my camera. Ho hum, another bloody camel. 

Which reminds me about Cynthia and Myrtle, who were in the garden at Old Dud’s retirement village having a smoke, when it started to rain. Myrtle pulled out a condom, cut off the end, put it over her cigarette, and continued smoking.

“What’s that, Myrtle?” asked old Dud, who had joined the ladies.

“A condom, Old Dud” she said. “This way my cigarette doesn’t get wet.” 

“Where did you get it?” asked Cynthia, who seemed intrigued. 

“They sell them at any chemist shop,” said Old Dud who had just remembered what a condom was for.

The next day, Cynthia hobbled down town to the chemist shop and asked for a box of condoms. The chemist looked at the 80 year-old Cynthia inquisitively then asked what brand of condom she preferred.

“Doesn’t matter, sonny,” she said sharply, “as long as it fits a Camel.”

The chemist fainted.