by Alex Tinson
Our family emerged, collectively, from our shell shock and continued on back into the world. We travelled up to the Top End to make a base at Buckingham Downs Station near Boulia, the Queensland town that had been the scene of our worst times in the Great Australian Camel Race.
My old mate Paddy McHugh was now on board and in charge of this second leg of our mission. It was time to go camel chasing again. We needed a herd of camels to take back to Al Ain for the second phase of our embryo transfer research: using Australian camels to test out our techniques in Al Ain. We hired a number of helicopters to fly out from Mount Isa to find camels at Buckingham Downs, a spread of more than 300,000 hectares. The station was home to hundreds of wild camels and I knew from the Great Australian Camel Race that this part of the country had produced the best racing stock.
It was an exhilarating, adrenalin-charged exercise with a team of micro-helicopters turning on a sixpence as they manoeuvred wild camels through the dust and the dirt. The rotor blades were kicking up massive clouds of red sand as the camels skittered and attempted to gallop off in different directions. Paddy was fearless, doing what he does best. At one stage he leapt from a helicopter to get on top of a beast that was proving tricky and then bulldogged it into a corral.
We managed, finally, to herd thirty-two braying, kicking camels into a holding pen, fortunately without mishap. Paddy’s job now was to train them so they would be ready to be loaded on a plane in Darwin in a couple of months’ time for the trip to Al Ain aboard the Crown Prince’s private Airbus, which had been specially fitted out to transport camels.
I also tossed in a Staffordshire bull terrier, who I called Rolley, just to make me feel more at home in the UAE.
Seven
Harry the Camel
We left Paddy to it and arrived back in Al Ain as a gang of four again, in the full fifty-plus degree heat of August.
We did our best to be normal, first busying ourselves getting Katya and Erica ready for the start of the new school year. I got cracking on work at the camel centre, which was nearly complete with the labs and equipment we needed to start some serious blood work.
It was as though the move back helped to draw a line under our tragedy. It brought us closer together, but Patti and I didn’t talk about it. We had gone from nearly losing Katya, to losing Anya and then losing Natalia. Maybe we should have gone to therapy, but we didn’t. We elected not to look into the chasm of despair beneath us. I think subconsciously I had a morbid dread that I could completely unravel if I allowed myself to really think about it too deeply. A survival instinct kicked in because I might well have collapsed in a heap.
And again, as if to show that life goes on, we soon found out that Patti was pregnant again. This was wonderful news—at least, it should have been. But I was worried. We had been fed a line that there was a familial genetic strain for sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, apparently based on research by a specialist. It set me off collecting cases to try to make sense of what had happened.
The term SIDS is used to apply to the unexplained death of children less than twelve months old. Although there has now been a dramatic decline in its incidence, at the time this was happening to us it was the leading cause of death in Australia for babies up to one year of age. It normally happened when a baby was sleeping and most often between the hours of midnight to 9am. There were many theories about the contributing factors: from cigarette smoke, to sleeping in the same bed as the parents, to having been born premature. However, around this time researchers discovered that if a baby slept on their back it was the single biggest step you could take to avoid SIDS, and that discovery led to a huge drop in the number of cases.
But most alarming to me at the time of our turmoil were the statistics. In Japan there was a one in ten thousand chance of a baby dying from SIDS. In the United States it was one in two thousand. The way I looked at it, we had experienced two cases and a near miss with Katya. If you take the US statistics, the chances of that happening three times in one family was eight billion to one. On the Japanese statistics it was a quadrillion to one. And suddenly you go, ‘Fuck! They’re crazy numbers.’ Really, you’ve got much more chance of winning lotto.
All the while, I was thinking, is this new baby going to be part of the pattern playing out here? Are we going to have more ‘genetic’ problems? What in hell is going on?
Word came that the President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed, had been asking questions about how those Australians were going with the embryo transfers. He had apparently taken time out during a state visit to Japan to ring our boss, Mr Zuhair.
This was one of those good news/bad news scenarios. On the one hand we were blown away that the leader of the country would have our breeding program top of mind—it showed us how everything kept coming back to camels. On the other hand, it reminded us of the pressure we were under to produce the goods.
We had been hired to work with the Crown Prince’s camels, but of course what is good for the son is good for the father. And what is good for the father is good for the emirate of Abu Dhabi. And what is good for Abu Dhabi is good for the UAE. In fact, it’s just good, full stop.
Thankfully, we were able to report to Mr Zuhair that the news from Australia was very promising. On top of the success with superovulating the females, Angus McKinnon’s team had completed a large number of successful embryo transfers with the wild camels in Marble Bar. The good thing is you don’t need to wait long to know if a camel is pregnant, nor do you need to do any ultrasounds as you would with a horse. After twelve to fourteen days, if the female is pregnant her tail rises reflexively when she is placed near a male. It’s pretty obvious. The final phase was to see how many of those pregnancies would become live births. We were very confident that most of them would, but you never know until you know.
The next step would be to take the science we had developed in Australia and apply it in the UAE, experimenting first with the Australian camels we’d rounded up at Buckingham Downs and which were to be freighted over. We would further refine our reproductive techniques with them as a final check before being let loose to use our technology on the Crown Prince’s precious herd.
During all this time we had not yet met our ultimate employer, the Crown Prince. We had met his brothers as well as other notables, who were clearly his eyes and ears on the project, but not the man himself.
Word would certainly have spread that even the small changes we had made to training had made a difference. Our experimental group of twelve camels had picked up some wins at minor races around the country, mainly because they were fitter than the others.
On one of those occasions Doug and I had been due to meet the Crown Prince’s son, who had arranged a special trip to see the new breed of camels in action. Unfortunately we had stayed way too late at a party the night before that had been hosted by Mr Zuhair’s son. We were due at the track by 5.30am, but we’d slept in and only arrived at around 7am, after the races had finished. This was a scary moment: if there is one thing you must never do it is keep a member of the royal family waiting. We rushed out to the track and were guided to where the Crown Prince’s son was hosting a gathering of local notables, sitting around a fire and having coffee in the cool of the morning. There was lots of security and lots of guns.
We presented ourselves sheepishly, fully expecting a rebuke for this serious lapse in protocol. I had rehearsed a line that I hoped might warm the situation. Using my basic Arabic, I apologised both for being late and for the quality of my Arabic, explaining that I could only talk about camels and women. ‘What else is there?’ the Crown Prince’s son shot back in English and broke out into a big laugh. Fortunately for us, our camels had performed out of their skins and won several of the races, so the Crown Prince’s son was very happy indeed. The kinship of the camel, it seemed, trumped everything.
Now, most likely because of our achievements in Australia, we were suddenly to meet the Crown Prince himself, Sheikh Khalifa. Such invitati
ons are not made lightly. All those in the chain that led from the Crown Prince down needed to be satisfied that we were worthy of the honour; their reputations ride on getting their judgements right. Powerful men like the Crown Prince rely on the judgement of their gatekeepers, and the gatekeepers rely on the continuing trust of the powerful, such as the Crown Prince.
The invitation to meet the Crown Prince was therefore hugely significant. The occasion was Eid, the celebration that follows the end of the month of Ramadan. Eid is a period of rejoicing and eating after a month of dawn-to-dusk fasting, when you deny yourself earthly pleasures to be closer to God. The occasion of Eid is a special time in Islamic life when families gather together, something akin to Christmas and New Year for Christians.
The event was to be held at the royal family’s palace, which occupied an entire block in the centre of Al Ain. The palace was surrounded by high walls, guarding the privacy of the ruling family. Even taking a photograph of the walls—let alone the palace inside—was strictly forbidden. The invitation was extended to all the Australians at the camel research centre—Heath, Doug, Geoff and me. I scrambled to get hold of a suit and tie.
On arrival we were ushered directly into an anteroom at the front of the palace reception area, but on the way through we got a quick glimpse of the inside of the meeting hall. It was huge, with high ceilings, gold chandeliers and a Persian rug running the length of the room. In the distance, at the very end, were ceremonial gold-braided chairs, and above them hung a massive photo of Sheikh Zayed, the President of the United Arab Emirates and father of Sheikh Khalifa, the Crown Prince. It was opulence on a scale none of us had seen before and we let out a collective, ‘Holy shit.’
We were given the brief instruction that, when called, we should walk all the way to the end and greet the Crown Prince. But that was all. In the meantime we would wait in this room.
We waited. And we waited. It was a long, long time, maybe an hour and a half. Looking through the doorway of our room we were able to catch a glimpse of dignitaries as they arrived to have their cars parked. One by one a who’s who of the UAE’s most powerful men stepped past us. Some I recognised from television as government ministers. Many were wearing fine silk robes in black or gold over the top of the standard white cotton robes of the Gulf, a sign of their status. We were in no doubt that here was the very centre of power in the United Arab Emirates: the intricate web of family and old friendships, forged through tribal bonds and ancient battles. Now these business leaders, other sheikhs and VIPs from Al Ain made up the ruling elite of the nation.
Protocol dictated that each enter the room and walk the length of the vast Persian rug to greet His Highness. As each one arrived, all others in the room would stand. And, having met the Crown Prince, each would then take their place on one of the two hundred chairs lined up along each side of the room, after shaking the hand of every person who had already arrived. It was highly formal and ritualised, but at the same time there was the easy familiarity of people who had grown up with each other.
More and more people arrived. Then finally it was our turn to enter.
We got up, walked around the corner and, with our first step onto the Persian rug, four hundred Emiratis in ceremonial dress rose as one from their chairs. There, at the very end of the room, beneath the huge portrait of his father and flanked by giant UAE flags, sat Sheikh Khalifa. The walk was perhaps fifty metres, but it felt more like five hundred. The whole room remained standing as we made our way, three western suits in a sea of robes, until we finally stood face to face with our boss, the Crown Prince. We were briefly introduced, the Crown Prince nodding and taking us in. Then it was over and we returned the length of the room, this time shaking everyone’s hand along the way.
We were the last of the guests to be presented, and as soon as that was over we were led into another room, where we sat on the floor for the feast. Today, seated in a small group with our camel bosses Mr Zuhair and Aylan Al Muheiri, we were being given the ultimate honour as we were joined by Sheikh Khalifa, with our interpreter, Bengawi, placed between us and His Highness. He asked how we were enjoying living in Al Ain and how our families were adjusting, but most of all he was keen to hear how the embryo transfer program was progressing.
We had made it to the inner sanctum of Arabia.
Baby Madeline came into the world twelve months after we had lost Natalia. What should have been a wonderful event was tempered by a corrosive anxiety: what if it happened again?
After what we had been through, of course, Madeline became probably the most spoilt, fussed-over child in existence. We took no chances. There were not one but two baby monitors on her continuously, so we could be sure that she was still breathing. Even with that we carried out constant checks. We slept with one eye open, never feeling completely sure if Madeline would survive the night or not.
Fortunately for me I am a very positive person; that’s probably what has got me through everything, really. Without that, I think things could have been very different. I see what has happened to other people under similar circumstances and think, Jesus, how come I didn’t spin off the edge? Looking back, it’s amazing I didn’t unravel. I just kept saying: ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.’
I think of myself as a strong person. I’m not given to making excuses for my failures or when things go wrong. I look at my dad’s life and all the horror he saw, yet he never went on about it and managed to live a normal life when he came to Australia. Dad was from a generation that didn’t complain, and he was also very British in that stiff-upper-lip way. Sure, he loved us, but he would never say so. That was my model of what a dad was and did.
And when you look at the kind of vet I became, there was nothing sentimental about it. I loved the wild animals most, the ones that have the sharpest survival instincts. I think I was always in love with the qualities of resilience, strength, self-sufficiency and a will to survive. Having always resisted the touchy-feely approach to things, later in life I’ve looked more closely at grief and advice on how to handle it. It turns out my reactions were a textbook case on what not to do. Here’s a brief list of some of the things you can do wrong in situations like ours:
• avoid emotions
• be overactive leading to exhaustion
• use alcohol or other drugs
• make unrealistic promises to the deceased
• have unresolved grief from a previous loss
• resent those who try to help.
I could say ‘yes’ to just about every one of those, except for the alcohol and drugs.
I also wonder if living in the UAE was part of my therapy. It is so diverse, so changing, so challenging and stimulating. When you’ve got all of that going on, you haven’t got time to sit in the corner and say, ‘Woe is me.’ Maybe if I had been back in Australia and just doing the same old stuff, I might have felt the emptiness more and life might have been very different. It’s hard to know.
In a way, I guess I did undertake some therapy. Without making a conscious decision, I started playing around with drawing. I found it therapeutic to spend time immersed in my own thoughts, pencil and paper in hand. Eventually, out of the lines and curves I was drawing emerged a character. It was a camel who I called Harry—Harry the Lazy Camel, named in honour of my father, Harry Tinson. I turned the Harry drawing into a T-shirt design and then started doing illustrations and words for a children’s book, with Harry the Lazy Camel as the central character.
My illustrations were sparse, like the desert itself. Harry’s shape mimicked the soft, wind-sculpted curves of the sand dunes. He was an elegant creature and carried himself with a certain nonchalance. Harry liked the simple things in life, like curling up in the warm sun and sleeping. He entertained thoughts of being something else, like a racing camel or a wild Australian camel or some entirely different creature from wild Arabia, like a falcon or an oryx. But in the end he was just happy being himself.
I dedicated my first book to Madeline and
certainly at the time believed I was doing this for our new baby. But in hindsight I think I was really retreating into a private world that allowed me to escape the trauma of loss.
For my second book I developed half a dozen new animal friends for Harry, including Carl the Racing Camel, Basil the Bactrian (two-humped) Camel and Felicity the Flamingo. The story went that Harry was unhappy because he didn’t know the date of his birthday, so he went looking for answers from his friends. They didn’t know either, but one day they decided to hold a surprise birthday party for him. Harry, of course, was asleep, so his friends placed a party hat on his head, a cake with candles next to his nose and presents all around him. He woke to find all his friends waiting for him. It was the best day in Harry’s life.
This book was dedicated to Anya and Natalia. I penned an inscription: ‘For Anya and Natalia, who never knew a birthday.’
Harry the Camel took the place of going to therapy, which I probably should have done. Indeed, Harry was to become an obsession.
Eight
Home, sweet home
Everything had moved incredibly fast, not just for me but my whole family. It was like riding the big dipper: one moment I was up on a professional high, the next I was dropping down into the emotional depths. I was the luckiest person in the world and at the same time the unluckiest.
In my work there were exhilarating breakthroughs along with heady, adrenalin-charged moments of walking through doors into a new culture. It was so alien, and sometimes scary. All was new; ‘normal’ barely existed.
But as a family, we needed anchors. And, being a Tinson family, that meant turning our desert house into a Tinson home.