Mattress - RIP
"Mattress" - old timer, been there, done that, lead-camel.
Now deceased after 19 years of unbelievable service
Philip Gee purchased his first ten camels in 1984 and Mattress
was one of these.
One of the features of our operation is that many camels can be
reliably brought to the 'lead' but Mattress was the camel of choice
until 2002.
There wasn't much that Mattress hadn't seen or could not do. He
had experienced just about all there was to experience and that
covers some pretty testing situations!
Mattress was named after a good friend (Matthew) whose nickname
was 'Mattress'.
In April 2003, Mattress was put down for post-mortem purposes
to find out why he was wasting away. For the sake of the rest of
the camels we needed to know. This was a terrible decision to make
but necessary. We found a huge 20kg cyst in his left lung which
was not contagious but it was also beyond surgery, had we known
of its presence.
Mattress will be remembered very affectionately by many
and he will be sadly missed by staff. His position at the front
of the string was taken by the legendary Wally, three times Australian
camel racing champion (1994,95,96).
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